Boy, Snow, Bird(28)
I said: “What do you mean, am I sure? What kind of question is that? Of course I’m sure.” And I kissed him.
“It’s just that sometimes you get this look . . . you know how in movies people come around after fainting or hitting their head and immediately start asking, ‘Who am I? Where am I? Who are you?’ I’ve seen you looking like that sometimes, and I can’t tell if that’s just how life strikes you or if you’re only like that when you’re around me. I kind of like that look. It’s endearing. But what if one day you figure out who you are and where you are and who I am and realize it’s all a big mistake?”
“Impossible. For the last time, I’m sure.”
Magic words. As soon as I’d said them, Snow was halfway to the ceiling, waving her arms and yelling “Hurray!” Arturo climbed up onto his own bed, stating that it was the principle of the thing. I was the one he’d said yes to, so he had to bounce higher than Snow. Then of course I had to show them who the real bed-bouncing champ was. They surrendered pretty quickly.
I put the bracelet in the hotel-room safe, and checked on it once a day. We were almost carefree for the rest of the weekend, Snow, Arturo, and I; they were carefree, we built sandmen and taught Snow’s dolls how to play beach volleyball with water balloons. The snake was always there each time I checked, and there was no way to go back to Flax Hill without it.
—
when mia saw the bracelet, she said: “Oh, Boy.” She spun the jewelry box around on the tabletop, wouldn’t even touch its contents.
I said: “I know.”
“I mean, could that scream ‘wicked stepmother’ any louder?”
“I know.”
Mia ruffled my hair. “It’s okay, it’s fine. It only looks like that. That’s not how it really is.”
10
i shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that there was a man three blocks away from the boarding house who specialized in bespoke wedding-cake toppers. It was Flax Hill, town of specialists. He had a storefront full of ready-made cake toppers available for sale. Clay ballerinas and baseball players and owls, numbers shaped out of wax, all of which were far less unsettling than the wedding-cake toppers. Each tiny bride and groom had this beseeching smile painted onto their face. The kind of smile that suggested dark magic was afoot, a switch had been made, the couple leading the first dance were not who they claimed to be, and wouldn’t someone please intervene? That’s what I’d think if I saw a pair of smiles like that on top of a wedding cake, anyway. But Webster had set her heart on having a pair of cake toppers made by this particular specialist. Something about his father having made her parents’ cake toppers, and his grandfather having made her grandparents’ . . . so I sat with her while she went through photographs of her and Ted together. Mr. Cake Topper Specialist wanted the photographs to work from, and she dismissed every photo I suggested. “Maybe we’ll have to take a new one,” she said.
I’d collected my bridesmaid’s dress from the seamstress’s store the day before and run into a couple of Webster’s other bridesmaids. We’d debated whether or not to tell her that if she didn’t end her diet now she wouldn’t look pretty on the day, just brittle. As her friend Jean put it: “She’s got no business getting this thin for a December wedding. If there’s snow, she’ll catch pneumonia so quick she won’t know what’s hit her.”
“Ted keeps saying, ‘Let’s just elope,’” Webster said, and gave me such a wicked grin that I didn’t have the heart to say anything about brittleness.
Brenda, Webster’s neighbor, knocked on the door. “You’ve got a gentleman caller, Novak. No, no, not Loverboy. Though it could be Loverboy Mark Two. He says it can’t wait.”
“Is he handsome?” Webster asked, following me to the staircase. Brenda shrugged. “I guess so. In a freckled kind of way. Some girls get all the luck.”
Webster and I took a peek over the banister. We saw a mop of light brown hair, then Charlie Vacic looked up and gave us the full winsome-puppy-dog treatment. I was already on my way down the stairs, so the push Webster gave me was wholly unnecessary, as was her crowing that she was going to tell Arturo on me, which brought seven of our fellow tenants out onto the landing to see who I was two-timing my fiancé with.
“Hi,” I said, pulling him into the front parlor and closing the door behind us. “What are you doing here?”
“How are you, Charlie, long time no see, how’s med school, was it a long bus ride, can I offer you something to drink?” Charlie said. He dropped into an armchair and closed his eyes. I sat down too, in the chair opposite his. My knees had turned to water.
“I’m well, thank you, Boy,” he supplied. “Yes, it has been a while. Med school’s fine, I’m not failing, and I’ve avoided hypochondria by deciding my time’s up when it’s up. The bus ride aged me by about ten years and a cold beverage would be the best thing that could happen to me right now.”
What could I do or say, other than bring him a glass of someone else’s root beer that I found in the icebox? He drained the glass without speaking, so I got him a refill. Then he was ready to talk.
“I got your letter. Are you really getting married?”
I looked into his eyes. He couldn’t return the gaze steadily, kept focusing on my left eye, then on my right. I could guess what he was thinking: that there were two of me, that was the explanation, that was why I was acting like this. I had applied this rationale to the rat catcher the first time he’d punched me. First you try to find a reason, try to understand what you’ve done wrong so you can be sure not to do it anymore. After that you look for signs of a Jekyll and Hyde situation, the good and the bad in a person sifted into separate compartments by some weird accident. Then, gradually, you realize that there isn’t a reason, and it isn’t two people you’re dealing with, just one. The same one every time. Keep switching eyes all you want, Charlie. You’re going to hate the conclusion you reach.