Queen of Babble Gets Hitched

• Chapter 14 •

“Here’s another one,” my sister Rose says, dropping the casserole plate down on the kitchen table in front of me unceremoniously. “I think it’s green bean. Or something green, anyway.”

My other sister, Sarah, looks up from the notebook into which she’s recording the names of everyone who has brought something over for us to eat, since we are supposedly so consumed with grief over Gran’s death that we can’t cook. For some of us, this is actually true. The kitchen table is covered with casserole dishes.

“Who’s it from?” Sarah wants to know.

“I don’t know,” Rose says crabbily as she digs through her purse, which she’s left on the kitchen counter next to the sliding glass door to the deck. “I found it on the front porch. Check the card, nimrod.”

“Suck my dick,” Sarah says, snatching the card off the top of the casserole dish.

“Do you kiss your husband with that mouth?” Rose wants to know. Then she lets out a tinkly laugh. “Oh, that’s right. He left you. So where’s Luke, anyway?” Rose turns her attention to me.

“Don’t talk to me,” I say to Rose.

Rose looks at Sarah. “What’s her glitch?” she wants to know.

“She’s not speaking to you,” Sarah says. “Because you called TMZ on her client. Remember?”

“Oh, please,” Rose says with a laugh. “You’re not still mad about that, are you? That should be water under the bridge. Our grandmother is dead. Now, come on. Where’s Luke? Your fiancé? Isn’t he going to come to your own grandmother’s funeral? Or is he too busy with school or whatever? As usual.”

“He’s in France,” I say from between gritted teeth.

“Oh, France,” Rose says with another laugh. “Sure. Why not. France.”

“He is,” I say. Why can’t I not speak to people I’ve resolved never to speak to again? “He’s helping his uncle set up a new investment office. Not that it’s any of your business. He wanted to come. He’s really sorry. But he can’t leave right now.” And besides. We’re on a break. I don’t mention this to Rose, who doesn’t deserve to know any of my personal business. But it’s true.

“Of course,” Rose says. “You know, we’re all starting to wonder if this Luke guy even exists, or if he’s just some guy you’ve made up to make us think you finally got a boyfriend. As if.” Still laughing, Rose opens the sliding glass door and steps out into the cool evening air, not bothering to close it behind her, so all the mosquitoes come buzzing in.

“I hate her too,” Sarah informs me matter-of-factly as soon as Rose is out of earshot. “Don’t pay any attention to her. You have no idea how lucky you are you got out of here. Seriously.”

I am sitting with my arms crossed in front of my chest, holding on to both my elbows. I have been sitting like this since I got home.

I just can’t believe she’s really gone. Gran, I mean. The thing is… I knew she was old. I did.

I just never thought she was that old.

“Well, she just died, Lizzie” is what Shari’s dad had said when I’d asked him how it had happened when he stopped by to drop off a plate of Mrs. Dennis’s Heath Bar Crunch cookies a little while ago. “She was old.”

“But—” I’d been going to ask if there was going to be an autopsy. But a warning look from my mother had stopped me. Mom doesn’t want people talking about cutting up his mother in front of Dad. Which I guess I can understand.

And okay, Gran was ninety, after all. I guess how she died isn’t any big mystery.

But why now? When I need her most? I mean, not to be selfish or anything. But couldn’t she have waited a month or two, for a time when I wasn’t so… confused?

Everyone seemed kind of relieved when Dr. Dennis gave me a little bottle of pills.

“Shari asked me to prescribe you these,” Shari’s dad said, uncomfortably handing them over. “They’re to make you feel better. Now, remember… no drinking alcohol while you’re on those, Lizzie!”

Everyone laughed like Dr. Dennis had made a great joke. And looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to take one of the pills. Which I pretended to, just to get them off my back.

But if they think doping me up is going to keep me from asking the hard questions—like are they going to play Gran’s favorite song, “Highway to Hell,” at the funeral, or aren’t they? — they can just think again. I’m not going to be dismissed that easily. Gran might have been happy to ride through life in an alcoholic haze—she might even have been good at it—but not me.

Never me.

“Really,” Sarah is going on. “You wouldn’t believe what a bitch Rose has turned into. Well, not turned into, because she was always a bitch. But she’s gotten worse with age. You think that thing with her calling the paparazzi on your friend is bad? Just wait. Maybe it’s perimenopause. I saw something about it on Oprah. So Chuck and I are having some problems? He didn’t leave me. He’s just taking some time to work through a few things. Like Rose and Angelo have it so perfect. He doesn’t even have a job. She’s still supporting both of them.”

“Huh,” I say. I still can’t believe my own sister thinks my fiancé is made up. Like I would even go to the trouble. For her.

And, okay, so Luke didn’t even offer to fly back and meet me here for the funeral. But I’m the one who asked for the break. Maybe he thinks he wouldn’t be welcome. That’s a natural assumption, right? It’s my fault, really. The poor guy probably thinks I don’t want him anymore.

Besides, he doesn’t have any living grandparents. They all died when he was little. He doesn’t know what it’s like to lose a grandparent as an adult. A grandparent I was as close to as Gran. Luke doesn’t have any idea what that’s like.

Neither do I, actually. I’m just going through it now for the first time. Without my fiancé’s shoulder to lean on.

“And you should see what she’s doing to her kids,” Sarah goes on. “You have never seen kids so overextended. Ballet, tap, karate, gymnastics, French—French, for Christ’s sake. They live in Michigan. When are they going to need to speak French? Except maybe at your wedding, if it ever takes place. They never have a minute to themselves, just to be kids. No wonder they’re so weird.”

At that minute Maggie, Rose’s eldest, wanders into the room, holding a reporter’s notebook, a pencil poised in one hand.

“Excuse me,” she says. “I’m starting my own newspaper. Do you have any news?”

Sarah and I blink at her.

“What?” I say.

“News,” Maggie yells. “I’m starting my own newspaper. A kid’s newspaper. I need some news to put in it. Do you have any news?”

“Your great-grandmother just died, for Christ’s sake,” Sarah says. “That isn’t enough news for you?”

Maggie looks at me. “Aunt Lizzie,” she says. “How do you feel about Gran being dead?”

Tears prick my eyes. Trying not to weep openly in front of my niece, I say, “I’m very sad about it. I’m going to miss her very much.”

“May I quote you on that?” Maggie wants to know.

“Yes,” I say.

“Good. Thank you.” Maggie turns around and leaves the room without another word.

“See?” Sarah says as soon as she’s gone. “There’s something wrong with that kid.”

Rose chooses that moment to reenter the kitchen, reeking of cigarette smoke. She closes the sliding glass door behind her and drops a pack of cigarettes and her lighter back into her purse.

“Something wrong with what kid?” she asks.

“Your kid,” Sarah snarls. “Maggie. She just came in here and announced she’s starting a newspaper and asked us if we had any news.”

“At least,” Rose says mildly, peeling the aluminum foil back on a peach cobbler someone has brought over and plunging a spoon into it, “she’s not an unimaginative, nose-picking moron like some people’s kids I could mention.”

Sarah sucks in her breath, but before she can say anything, I ask, “So what did you do with the money, Rose?”

Rose looks up from the cobbler. “Excuse me?”

“The money you got from spilling the fact that Ava Geck was hiding out in my apartment.” I stare at her. “What did you spend it on? It couldn’t have been liposuction for your upper arms, because they’re looking as enormous as ever.”

Rose’s shriek of outrage causes Mom’s china collection to tinkle. I take that as my cue to get up and leave.

“What’s going on back there?” Mom asks me as I drift into the living room, where she and Dad are meeting with Father Jim, who’ll be conducting Gran’s memorial service.

“Nothing,” I say and collapse onto the couch beside her. “Just sister stuff.”

Mom gives Father Jim an apologetic smile and says, “I’m so sorry. Go on, Father.”

I sit and listen to their conversation, barely able to register what they’re saying through the miserable haze into which I’ve sunk. I can’t remember ever feeling quite so horrible. I want to die. I do. Why won’t someone just kill me already? How can everyone just go on talking like nothing is wrong when it’s the end of the world, already?

“Well,” Father Jim says. “I was thinking a mass would be a lovely gesture.”

“Oh, a mass,” Mom says, looking over at Dad. “Yes, that would be lovely.”

Dad looks skeptical. “I don’t know,” he says. “A mass. That’ll make it an hour longer.” I wonder if Father Jim caught the fact that my mom kicked my father under the coffee table. “Ow. What I mean is, my mother wasn’t a particularly religious woman.”

Even through my misery, I’m able to register the fact that Gran wasn’t religious. She’d want a Byron Sully tribute at her memorial, not a tribute to God. Because to her, Byron Sully was God. I feel myself perking up. Just a little. Because I’m starting to feel something besides sadness. And that’s anger.

“That just makes it all the more important,” Father Jim goes on, “to have a mass. Your mother’s attendance at our church was, especially in her later years, sketchy at best. But I know, had she been in full possession of her faculties at the end, this is what she’d have wanted.”

She was in full possession of her faculties, I want to shout. Fuller possession of her faculties than any of you.

“Now,” Father Jim continues. “About the musical selections—”

“Her favorite song was ‘Highway to Hell,’” I surprise myself by saying.

My mom glares at me. Dad bursts out laughing, but stops when my mother transfers her glare to him.

“Er,” Father Jim says. “Yes. Well, be that as it may, I find a more traditional selection tends to please parishioners—”

“But it’s her favorite song,” I interrupt. I don’t blame my mother for glaring. She’s right. Why am I interfering? At the same time, though—“Surely you’d want to play someone’s favorite song at her funeral.”

“Well, maybe not that song,” Mom says, looking flustered. “It’s about… well, going to hell, Lizzie.”

“Maybe we could find an instrumental version,” Dad says thoughtfully.

Mom gives me a “see what you started” look. Then she says, “Lizzie, Mrs. Brand said she’d be stopping by with a Brunswick stew. Could you wait on the porch for her? She twisted her ankle recently and I don’t want her trying to get out of the car while holding a large pot. It would be lovely if you could meet her in the driveway and take the stew from her directly.”

I stare at my mother as if she’s lost her mind. When it becomes clear from the unblinking way in which she stares back, however, that she’s not kidding, I sigh and get up from the couch. I’m almost all the way out of the house when I overhear her say, sotto voce, to Father Jim, “Lizzie and her grandmother were very close. I’m not sure having her here while we plan the service is really the best idea. Lizzie’s always been the most… well, emotional of my children.”

Tears fill my eyes. I stagger out onto the night-darkened porch—no one has thought to flick on the light—and sink down onto the steps, burying my head in my knees. Emotional?

Well, I guess that’s me. Is it emotional to be sad that my grandmother is dead? Is it emotional to wish that the person who was conducting her funeral was someone who actually knew her, who could maybe say a few words about her that might actually mean something?

Is it emotional to feel as if I’m a stranger in my own family, as if these people I’ve known my whole life don’t actually know me—or care about me—at all? Gran was the only one—the only one of them—who ever said anything to me that was actually worth a damn.

Not that I ever told her that.

And now she’s gone. And I’ll never have the chance. Never have the chance to talk to her again.

No wonder I’m so emotional.

God. Maybe I should take one of those pills Dr. Dennis prescribed after all. I can feel them, rattling around in their bottle in the pocket of my jeans. Will they make me feel less emotional? Will they stop me from feeling anything at all? Because right now that’s what I’d really, really like.

Headlights flash, and I raise my head. Mrs. Brand and her Brunswick stew. I swipe at my cheeks with my wrists. I don’t want Mrs. Brand—whoever she is—to see me looking like such an unholy mess.

But the car doesn’t turn into the driveway. It pulls over and parks down the street. It’s so warm and humid outside, a sort of mist has settled over the street, making it look as if a fog has rolled in. I stare at the red taillights through the fog, breathing in the summer air, so familiar and yet so strange after so many months in the city. The smell of fresh-cut grass, the whine of cicadas, the chirp of crickets… these are summer scents and sounds that are almost foreign to me now, I haven’t experienced them in so long.

Someone gets out of the parked car. Even though it’s pretty dark out, and the mist is pretty thick, I can see it’s not a woman. It’s a man, tall and broad-shouldered. I look away, through the fog, into the dark sea of our yard—the yard where Rose and Sarah forced me to hose off Mom and Dad’s bedspread that time Gran was babysitting us and ended up vomiting cooking sherry all over it.

Yeah, that hadn’t been much fun.

But before that—before the vomiting—Gran had told me the story about working in the munitions factory during World War II, while Gramps had been off fighting the Nazis in France (every single man in his platoon had died when they’d found a bottle of wine in an abandoned farmhouse in Marseille and drank from it, not knowing it had been poisoned by Nazi sympathizers. Gramps, being a teetotaler, was the only one to survive), and how she and the other girls had painted black lines on the backs of their legs to make it look like they were wearing stockings with seams when they went out on Saturday nights, because all the silk had been used up for parachutes.

That’s the kind of thing we should be talking about at her funeral. The happy times. The incredible sacrifices her generation made—without complaint. Not some stupid biblical passages that have nothing to do with Gran and never did.

I notice through the fog that the man is walking toward our house. I also notice he’s the same shape and size as… my fiancé.

My heart seems to freeze inside my chest.

But what would Luke be doing here? I mean, it’s true my grandmother—the family member I cared about most in the world although I might not have realized it until it was too late—is dead. And it’s true I’m really disappointed in him because he’s made no effort during the course of our relationship so far to meet anyone in my family.

But he’s in France. He wouldn’t have flown all the way to Ann Arbor just for the funeral. We’re on a break.

And then, as the mist swirls and tumbles around the man’s legs as he turns into our driveway, I see something that causes my heart, which a moment ago was frozen, to explode into what feels like a million tiny pieces of flame—like fireworks, only inside my chest, instead of up in the night sky: he’s wearing a baseball cap.

A second later, I’m on my feet and I’m running. I’m running toward him through the fog, and a second later, I skid to a halt in front of him. He stops too.

So, it seems, does time. All I can hear, in those few heartbeats, is the sound of the cicadas. And our breathing.

“What are you doing here?” I demand. My voice sounds gravelly for some reason.

“What do you think I’m doing here?” Chaz shoots back. His voice sounds gravelly too. “I came to see how you’re doing.”

I scan the street behind him. I see no one else in the mist.

“Where’s Valencia?” I ask him.

“Fuck Valencia,” he says.

“I’d assumed you already took care of that,” I say.

“You know what?” Chaz says, starting to turn back toward the car. “I can leave, if that’s what you want.”

My heart gives a twist, and I take a quick step forward, laying my hand on his arm.

“Don’t go,” I say. “I’m sorry. I just… ” A sob catches my throat. “Oh, Chaz. Everything is so screwed up.”

“I know,” he says. I can’t see his eyes because they are hidden in the shadow of the brim of his baseball cap.

“No,” I say, my own eyes swimming in tears. “I mean, it’s not just—it’s not just Gran. It’s a lot more than that.”

And then, just like that, it happens. My mouth takes over from my brain, and the words just come spilling out before I can stop them.

“It just sucks,” I hear myself saying in that same strange, gravelly voice, “because… because I think I’m in love with my fiancé’s best friend.”

“So?” Chaz says without skipping a beat and sounding completely unsurprised. “I’ve got it worse. I’m in love with my best friend’s fiancée.”

For a moment there’s no sound at all. Neither of us seem to be breathing, and even the cicadas have fallen silent.

I’m not sure I heard him right. His best friend’s fiancée? But that… that’s me! Chaz means he’s in love with me!

That’s what he’s doing here at my parents’ house on this foggy summer night. That’s why he’s standing here in front of me with his arms at his sides, palms open, nothing to hide, no more sarcasm, no more biting remarks, no more Luke, no more Valencia, no more nothing. Just us.

All it took was a few thousand miles of separation, the stripping away of all but the rawest of emotions, and the death of one of the people I love most in the world.

Then, as if by some unseen cue, we both take a step forward until our chests collide, and he says, “Oof,” and then, “Lizzie—” and I throw my arms around his neck and drag his head down so that I can press my lips to his.

And then neither of us says anything for quite some time.