A Little Hope(30)

Since she set up practice in Georgia, she has felt like she’s at an extended sleepover at a friend’s house. Sure, she knows where everything is (it was she who found the apartment, who bought the flatware, the plates, the small sofa from Crate and Barrel), but she still wants to be home. Home. That apartment with Johnny isn’t it. But what is? Not her parents’ house. She’s homesick for something that isn’t anywhere. Thirty-three and homesick.

Damon, the groom, has requested Sinatra, and “Strangers in the Night” plays as he beckons Suzette. She puts her bouquet on the head table and walks coyly to him while everyone watches. She kisses his cheek and rests her head on his shoulder as they slow dance. A stunning bride and groom. They look otherworldly, classic, like something from the fifties. The windows at the country club are high, and outside Ginger can see stars and the black sky. There is a tall Christmas tree by the French doors, and on the large fireplace is a garland with red ornaments the size of grapefruits. Each table has an ivory tablecloth and ten flickering votives.

The band plays, and Suzette and Damon sway, and Ginger wants to ask her if this is everything she wanted, and how did she know? How did she know it would all work?

How does anyone know? How do you not just sail through your twenties and thirties, only making the next step? All through high school and college and then vet school, all those good grades, and what she wanted was just a cozy place to call home. She wanted love. She wanted that feeling of “ah, yes” when she pulled into her driveway after work. She wanted to stand side by side with someone every night, washing dishes. She wanted long drives heading nowhere, picnics by the Naugatuck River.

She thinks of how settled she used to feel when Luke would stay at her little apartment in college. How one year they had that small Christmas tree with the multicolored lights in her bedroom. How she bought them matching flannel snowflake pajamas and he came out of the bathroom with them on, his top unbuttoned in a way she found adorable, and they lay there and watched White Christmas. He had made popcorn balls that didn’t stay together, but they sipped cold eggnog and pulled pieces of popcorn and marshmallow out of the bowl, and she wanted that night to last forever.

When she started to fall asleep, he got up to unplug the tree, and she whispered, “Wait, can you leave it on?” and he stood there and smiled at her. All through the night, she would wake every so often to see the glow of the tree, and she felt something inside her that was as close to fullness as she’s ever felt. In the morning, he woke her by slipping a silver ring on her finger, and she remembers how the sun came into the apartment that day. How her mother had always said Christmas day sun is the best sun, and Ginger knew she was right. It lit up the leaves of the poinsettia on the kitchen table, it made patterns on the wall. It shone on Luke’s back as he sat on a barstool and ate the silver dollar pancakes she’d made.

He had gotten the ring at an antiques store. She wondered how he afforded it. It was from the 1930s with scrollwork on it. A bit scratched, but she loved it. Did it mean anything? Was he asking her something? She didn’t care. It fit perfectly. It turned out he just liked it. He wanted her to have it. He wasn’t thinking about marriage. Nor was he not thinking about it. He loved her and gave her a ring he couldn’t afford. She still has it.

Ginger waves to Cameron, who is dancing with two teenage boys, and thinks of Suzette’s house, of the counseling office she will set up there. She admires Suzette so much—all those teens that Suzette gives as much as she can, buys them milkshakes or Happy Meals. Ginger imagines Suzette and Damon’s beautiful future children and the holidays and the Pottery Barn bed they will probably sleep in and feels an incredible ache. She is standing alone at this wedding. This is where she has ended up.

She should stop daydreaming. She needs to deal with reality, with what’s really here. If this were a movie, she thinks, a song would come on. A song that Luke sang once, and she’d think of him, and decide finally that she only wants Luke Crowley. That’s it, isn’t it? Isn’t Luke what this is all about? In her green paisley dress, the camera would film her backing away from the wedding, and taking a cab or some other classic form of transportation, and arriving at Luke’s place. He’d crank open his apartment window, which she imagines would be street front, and look down. “Ginger?”

Stop doing this, she thinks. She rests her chin on her hand at one of the high tops and sips her drink. Luke…

He would see her there in her green dress. Her pearl necklace, the gold of her earrings, and she’d have tears in her eyes. He’d know she came all that way, and she’d deliver some long speech. She’d be breathless, and maybe it would be snowing lightly, maybe winter rain, and he’d duck his head inside and she’d see a light come on below, and wouldn’t he run down to her, wouldn’t he agree with everything she was saying? Wouldn’t he kiss her under a lone streetlamp as her cab pulled away and she’d stay there with him? Wouldn’t this Christmas be the best Christmas?

She doesn’t know where his apartment is. Or Luke. He might have a girlfriend.

And is she the type of person to cheat on her boyfriend?

Ginger shakes her head and sips her drink. She is irritated with herself. She cannot live in a fantasy world. Someone taps her on the shoulder then.

“Miss me?” Ahmed says. His eyes are playful. He has a faint five o’clock shadow on his face.