Summertime Guests Page 8

  But his mother had held her head high, the bag of peas still on her eye, and said “No, thank you. I’m fine, Officers. Just a little disagreement, like my husband said.” And Jason had recoiled at that awful lie. It was then that he understood exactly how petrified she was.

  When he was fifteen, his dad took off for good.

  The visceral memory resurfaces like a punch to the gut. Five years ago, his aunt—a woman he’d never met—called from California to say that his dad was gone. Cirrhosis of the liver, she reported, and Jason had thought Serves the bastard right. For Jason, there’s no easy point of reference when it comes to being a decent husband, a good father. His dad was a bully, a tyrant in the house, plain and simple.

  Another ball zooms past, bringing him back to the present moment. “Hey, go easy on me, would you?” he shouts. “Not all of us are former tennis champs.”

  “I am going easy on you,” Gwen says with a laugh.

  He pauses to wipe his forehead with the bottom of his T-shirt. The air has already turned muggy, cut only by the faint breeze off the water. But it feels good to sweat, to be using his body again and not standing in front of a classroom or sitting in the library, his dissertation staring back at him and daring him to finish. Plus there’s something satisfying about swinging a racket and hearing the ball’s thwack! against the sweet spot.

  They begin a proper match, and before Jason has even fully woken up, he’s fallen behind two sets. The third set starts off well enough, but then Gwen makes a couple of killer returns and pulls ahead so that they’re even.

  “Out!” Gwen calls when his ball lands somewhere near the white line on a return.

  “C’mon!” he hollers. “That was in!”

  “You know the rules.” She trots over to fetch the ball out of the bright pink begonias hemming in the court. “Person on the side of the court wherever the ball lands gets to call the shot. Besides, there’s no way you could see it from way back there.”

  He shakes his head in resignation and gets back into position for the next serve. When she tosses the ball up in the air, her body bent into an alluring reverse S, Jason allows himself a moment to appreciate the graceful arc of it, but it’s a moment too long because his racket misses the ball as it goes sailing by.

  “Try to stay awake!” she yells, clearly delighted. Jason bounces on the balls of his feet, twirls his racket, tries to refocus. He’s down 40–15 already in what might well be the last set. His mind flashes back to when he visited Gwen’s parents’ house in Chestnut Hill for the first time and he saw her girlhood bedroom, an entire wall littered with trophies and ribbons among faded posters of Justin Bieber and James Van Der Beek. At one point in junior high, she’d even considered going pro.

  She leans over and bounces the ball a few times in quick succession before serving. Fortunately, there’s not much spin on it, so he’s able to return it across the net with a quick forehand. Gwen scoots toward it, slams it back and Jason sprints to the opposite side of the court, backhanding it over. They’ve almost got an actual volley going, and he swats it back again to win the point.

  “Lucky shot,” she calls out.

  “Call it whatever you want. I’m still in the game.” The next point he wins as well, bringing the score to an even deuce. And then it’s 40–40, advantage Jason. But his semi-victory is short-lived. Gwen slams one, then two more aces, slicing them down the middle. “Yes!” She trots over to the net in victory.

  “Didn’t anyone tell you you’re supposed to let your boyfriend win on his birthday weekend?” he teases. She grabs her towel off the chair and blots her face, leaving behind a tuft of white terrycloth on her cheek. He reaches over to pluck it off and blows it into the air. It floats away like dandelion fluff.

  “Funny, no.” She uncaps her water bottle and grins. “Hey, check it out. That’s someone, right?” She nods in the direction of the adjacent court where a man with a mop of dark hair and a goatee and a woman with auburn shoulder-length hair unzip their racket bags.

  “Yeah, it’s someone,” Jason confirms.

  “No, you know, as in someone famous. I’m sure of it. His name is on the tip of my tongue. You know him, he’s funny. On TV.”

  “Seinfeld?”

  “No, no. The one with the crazy family. Remember, he sticks the smelly cheese in the suitcase to try to get his wife to carry it upstairs?”

  “Oh, Ray Romano?”

  “Yes! That’s it. That’s who it is. I’m positive.”

  Jason narrows his eyes, tries to get a better bead on the guy, who’s now staring back at them. Jason’s about to look away, but then the dude lifts his racket in a half wave and smiles. Gwen squeals. “Oh, my God! It is him. See, I told you! He’s waving at us.”

  Even Jason allows himself to be impressed for a brief moment. It does appear to be Ray Romano and, presumably, his wife. “Do you have anything he can sign?” Gwen asks, digging through her racket case. “How about a pen?”

  But there’s only his racket, a towel, a water bottle, their room key, a tennis-ball canister. Gwen’s face falls for a second, then brightens. “I’m going to ask him to sign my racket,” she announces, and before he can remind her that she doesn’t even have a pen, her white tennis skirt goes flouncing across the court to say hello. It’s all Jason can do not to call her back, to tell her to hold on. But then he hears church bells. Another text.

  He snatches up his phone, but this time it’s not from that Charlie kid. This time it’s the head of the history department, George, writing.

  Jason, please call me at your earliest convenience. Charlie Wiggam (a freshman in your class) has filed a complaint against the university. Let’s talk.

  He flops down in the chair. The little prick. He’s actually going to contest his grade? Jason can’t believe it. Maybe he’s the son of some bigwig, an alum who has donated millions to the school. Jason should have thought to check before he flunked him. But the kid hadn’t lifted a finger all semester! And his final exam, a piddly two-paragraph response to one of five different questions, was a joke. Underneath the other four questions, Charlie had drawn big, loopy smiley faces that winked up at Jason, as if he already knew: the joke was on him.

  TEN

  What does Riley want from marriage?

  It’s Saturday, June 5, and Riley and Hannah are shopping for a wedding dress at a boutique in Hingham. “You’re not like other brides,” Hannah says, sorting through a rack of ivory gowns that reminds Riley of a giant, poufy cloud. “So your dress should be unique. You know, it should say Riley.” When Riley raises an eyebrow, Hannah hurriedly clarifies. “Well, not literally, of course, but it should fit your personality. Kind of quirky and cute and sweet.” It’s this description that makes Riley smile for the first time since they’ve set foot in the store. If it were up to her, she’d order a handful of gowns online and choose whichever one fit best. The whole wedding-gown industry strikes her as a colossal racket, another chance to make frazzled brides feel even worse about themselves.

  “Hey?” Hannah asks, turning back to Riley. “Are you okay? You know, we don’t have to do this today if you’re not feeling it.” Riley loves that her friend has given up her afternoon to brave the upscale shops along the South Shore to search for a wedding dress. That she has picked up on Riley’s ambivalence (more like reluctance) is further testament to what a true friend she is.

  “Yeah, of course. Let’s do it.” Riley slips her arms through her tiny backpack straps and begins sifting through the trough of dresses with laser-beam focus. That Hannah looks nothing like your stereotypical maid of honor—combat boots, a romper that’s a touch too short for her Rubenesque figure, frizzy red hair done up in a scrunchie, makes Riley feel as if she’s surrounded by a secret force field. One look at Hannah, and the rail-thin, makeup-laden, perfumed salesclerks will, Riley hopes, steer clear of them.

  “So tell me about your hopes and
dreams. You know, for your wedding, your marriage, your life,” Hannah elaborates, after Riley shoots her a long, hard look.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “What? No. We might as well make good use of our girl time.”

  From the rack, Riley has pulled off a white satin dress, which Hannah now plucks from her hands, frowns at and returns to the rack. “Not you.” She reaches in and pulls out two other gowns, one a sexy low-cut that might be better suited to a 1920s flapper and another that can only be described as a gushing river of sequins. For a second, Riley’s heart performs a flip. Even though Hannah is her best friend in the entire world and she would step in front of a bus for her, it’s possible that her friend’s sense of style when it comes to formal wear leaves something to be desired.

  Riley crinkles up her nose, says “Mmm...don’t think so.”

  The funny thing is, when Riley considers Hannah’s question, she’s more certain about marrying Tom than she has been about pretty much anything in her life. She may not have dreamed of her wedding day like most girls, but when she considers what she wants from her marriage, well, she wants it all—the fairy tale of happily ever after. She wants the sweet house and babies and a dog (probably a golden retriever), and family pictures flecking the stairway wall. She wants out of their dingy apartment and into a place where they won’t have to drag their groceries up three flights of stairs every week. She wants a garage, where they can park their bikes without worrying about locking them up, and a wide, expansive yard with a small vegetable garden and trellises of morning glories. She wants a lifelong companion who will laugh at her jokes, agree with her political views (at least most of them) and maybe give her a massage after a long day at the flower shop. She wants romance and dahlias for no special reason. She wants to sneak upstairs to the bedroom to make love while the kids are napping or are away at a sleepover. She imagines a husband who, when he gets home from work, will come up behind her and wrap his arms around her waist while he plants delicate kisses along her neckline. She wants to know that she’s loved and to love someone back.

  She imagines years of school photos tucked away in albums and attending her children’s softball games, maybe coaching their soccer team. She wants a neighborhood not so unlike the one where she grew up in Lansing, where the kids can ride their bikes around safely or trek through the woods, so long as they’re home in time for supper. She wants sit-down dinners and nighttime stories while the family monkey-piles on top of each other by the fire in the deep of winter. She wants hand-holding and maybe a few stern words exchanged about too much TV-watching or no more video games. She wants backyard barbecues and Neighborhood Watches. Someone to bring her tea when she’s sick, someone to grow old with, who won’t drive her crazy.

  Riley may not be greedy about her wedding day, but when it comes to her future spouse, her life, she most certainly is. “What do you think of this one?” she asks, holding up a simple A-line gown, a pretty satin ribbon encircling the waist.

  Hannah tilts her head in serious consideration. “Not bad. It’s a little...something, though. I don’t know, plain, maybe?”

  Riley returns it to the rack. They’ve been here for fifteen minutes and already she’s growing bored. A slim, attractive salesclerk, her dark hair pulled up in a tight knot, follows a few paces behind them and begins asking Riley questions about her Big Day, whether it’s a formal or an informal event, what month. Riley tells her July, explains she’s looking for a simple yet elegant look and burrows back into the rack of dresses. She doesn’t care for this person’s help, but she doesn’t want to be rude, either. She has Hannah, Hannah who has already promised she won’t make Riley squeeze her body into a gazillion gowns. They’ve agreed to three dresses—five, tops—to try on today. Riley refuses to make this process into a circus, will not buy into the patriarchy that says women need to look a certain way on their wedding day and spend countless hours worrying about it.

  The clerk reappears holding a gown that would look lovely on someone with an hourglass figure, which is to say definitely not Riley. “How about this one?” she inquires. “We have the cutest shoes to match.” Her voice trills upward on the mention of the shoes.

  Riley pretends to consider it a moment before admitting, “I don’t think it’s quite right for me. I was thinking more of an A-line, maybe?”

  When the salesclerk wanders off, Riley shoots Hannah a desperate look. “Shoes? I have to get special shoes, too? You mean, I can’t wear my Birkenstocks under the dress?” She’s not kidding. On her perusal of the few wedding magazines in her possession, all the gowns appeared to hide the bride’s shoes. Riley was hoping to excise at least this one expense from her bridal budget.

  “You should probably have some nice shoes for the ceremony,” Hannah advises. “But don’t worry. You can change into your Birks afterward for dancing.”

  Riley nods, takes shallow breaths.

  “Hey, I meant to tell you, Tom and I looked at stationery last week.”

  “You did? Wow, you’re ahead of the game, Riles. You don’t even have a firm date set yet.”

  “I know, but I thought looking at stationery might help us pull everything together, figure out what kind of style we want for the wedding.”

  “See anything you liked?”

  “I think so.” It was, Riley has to admit, the one task she’s enjoyed so far out of all the wedding preparations. Combing through various card stocks and textures, debating over different typefaces had actually been kind of fun. Initially, they’d been planning to design the invitations on their computer at home, but Marilyn had quickly shot down that idea. “Nonsense. You two don’t have time to do it yourselves. You have to go to Cranes in Copley Plaza. They have the best stuff. Top of the line.” Then added helpfully, “And don’t worry about the cost. It’s my treat.”

  Marilyn’s offer was a pleasant surprise, especially once Riley scanned the price tags. It seemed the more you ordered, the cheaper the cost of an individual invitation, but she intended to keep the guest list small, no more than seventy-five people.

  “Do you know how many people your parents are thinking of inviting?” she’d asked Tom as nonchalantly as she could.

  “Oh, I don’t know. My mom said something like a hundred and fifty, I think.”

  Riley’s hand had stopped turning the pages in the binder of samples. “You’re kidding.”

  Tom peered up from his binder. “No, why? Is that a problem?”

  Riley didn’t know where to begin, whether she should start by saying that her family was so small—as in, infinitesimally small—that she could probably narrow her entire guest list down to thirty people, including her closest friends. That aside from a few cousins whom she saw once every decade, it was only her father, a handful of aunts and uncles, and if Tom’s family had one hundred and fifty guests at the wedding, then the tables would be embarrassingly lopsided. Not to mention that every guest meant another meal to pay for, another party favor to be ordered and a hell of a lot more booze.

  “Honey, that could easily turn into a two hundred–person wedding.”

  Tom shrugged and went back to scanning the invitation samples. “Guess I hadn’t given it much thought.”

  Which was fair. They hadn’t focused on the particulars yet. But had her fiancé forgotten all they’d talked about when they first got engaged? How they’d imagined a simple, intimate wedding? They’d even considered eloping, and now suddenly a wedding for two hundred people was possibly in the cards.

  Riley struggled to keep her voice from trembling. “I get it. Neither of us has given this day as much thought as your mother has,” she said jokingly. “But, seriously, we’re going to have to rein her in, trim that number substantially.” She hated the way she sounded. Like a drill sergeant.

  “All right?” His eyebrows furrowed in seeming confusion. “Whatever you want, honey. It’s your day.”

 
“But it’s not just my day!” she’d exclaimed, setting the book down on the table as if it were suddenly too heavy to hold. “That’s my whole point. It’s our day, and I was kind of hoping you’d be a little more heavily invested in it.”

  “Okaaay.” He set the binder down. “I’m listening. Talk to me.”

  Riley shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to get all wedding-hysterical on you, but I feel like I’m stressing out—which is precisely what I promised I wouldn’t do—and we’re a good year away from the wedding. What’s going to happen when we’re only a few months or weeks away?” She stopped, filling her lungs with air. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’d love some more input from you, so it’s not me making all the decisions.”

  He reached across the table and took her hand. “I’m here, aren’t I? That’s what I’m trying to do. We’re looking at invitations today, right? Figuring out what we like and don’t like?”

  She nodded, bit her lip.

  He leaned in and whispered, “Have you been reading that awful pink book again?” And with Tom’s mention of the dreadful pink book, the balloon of sudden panic growing inside her had burst with a satisfying pop!

  “Maybe?” When they first got engaged, Tom’s mom had gifted Riley one of those bride-to-be manuals, complete with a built-in planner leading up to I-Do Day. It was filled with annoying checklists of what to do when. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m freaking out for no reason. I guess this just makes it all seem very real.”

  She picked up the binder again, and after a few minutes, paused on a Save the Date card with a pleasingly guileless typeface, a font similar to that of the New Yorker magazine. Not a single, girly curlicue in sight. Below the type was the emblem of the peace sign.

  “It’s okay, I guess,” Tom said when she showed it to him. “Seems a little artsy-fartsy, though. I mean, aren’t these things supposed to have a theme?”