So I look around the party instead, and I see a fading blond guy with glasses and a receding hairline and a plain blue tie, a never-had-an-exciting-thought accountant type if there ever was one. It does occur to me that choosing guys my father will loathe is not a huge improvement over choosing guys my father will approve of, but I’ve got to take this one step at a time. And anyway, he looks nice. Like Paul. Lot of potential there.
I go find Scott and Jake, and I tug on Scott’s arm and say, “What about the guy in the blue tie, over there by the bar?”
Jake looks and nods. “Definitely a possible.”
Scott squints and says, “Looks a little dull for your dad.”
This I do not need. “I’m not dating for Dad any more. What do you think?”
“I think that’s a great idea and long overdue,” Scott says.
“No, about the guy.”
Scott gives me that I-love-you-but-you’re-an-idiot-look. “So now you’re going to start dating for me? Go talk to him, but don’t be yourself. Be sweet.”
Jake says, “Ignore him. You’ve always been sweet. It’s sort of a Stealth Bomber kind of sweet, but it’s there.”
I give up on both of them and go over to my sister. “What about the blond in the blue tie?”
She frowns over his way and then shakes her head. “Nope. Not your type. He’s Paul’s accountant. And he’s nice.”
I take this in the spirit in which it is meant, which is a kind attempt to save me some time because she doesn’t realize I’ve had an epiphany, and I move away to gather my courage. Jess comes over.
“Now what?” she says. “You’ve got that look in your eye.” She turned twenty-four a couple of weeks ago, and she thinks she knows it all. Actually, she probably does know most of it. I should have been so smart at her age.
I should be so smart now.
“The blond in the blue tie,” I tell her.
She squints over. This guy has got to be getting a little paranoid by now with all of us watching him, but he’s not breaking a sweat. “Boring. And look at that tie.”
“I told you not to listen to Grandpa,” I tell her. “You stop that right now.”
She gives me one of those beneath-contempt looks, the kind I used to give Steph. “Chill out, Aunt Caro. I was kidding. I’m my own woman.”
“Yeah, well, me, too.” I take a deep breath so I can go prove it.
I’m going to do it. I’m going to pick my way through this crowd to start a new life at forty-four, wearing pink chiffon, by making my move on an accountant.
“Hello,” I say loudly when I’m next to him, and the champagne slops out of his glass when he jumps. “I’m the sister of the bride, and I’m planning on making a pass at you, but I need to know first if you have a diagnosible psychological disorder, a reliance on controlled substances, or a predilection for whips, chains, German shepherds, or sheep.”
“Uh, no,” he says, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “But I’m willing to learn.”
Listen, I want you to know that I know that this isn’t going to work. Even if this guy turns out to be a man I could spend the rest of my life with, even if he turns out to be faithful and true, even if he doesn’t contract a fatal disease or collapse from a stroke, even then, a truck will hit him. I know this in the very depths of my soul. I am looking at a mild-mannered accountant, and I am seeing a future of pain, degradation, loss, and despair.
But I don’t care. I’m finally going to have my own goddamned moment.
Even if it is at my sister’s wedding.
Appendix A: The ABC Story
This is how it all got started. In 1996, Ron Carlson gave my graduate class a writing exercise based on a Joyce Carol Oates story that was structured by using 26 sentences, the first one beginning with A, the second with B, and so on. When I sat down to write the story, I thought Carlson was giving us busy work. When I finished it, I knew he was a genius teacher because writing that exercise showed me that any structure will work as long as it is a structure. So here it is from the Carlson Workshop, my Alphabet Exercise:
After my sister, Zoë, shot the mailman, Mama grounded her for twenty-four hours and made her miss the big dance over at the Grange Hall in Xenia, but Zoë said it was worth it just to hear old Buster scream, and she didn’t care anyway because her boyfriend, Nick, is away at boot camp so there’s not much fun in Zoë’s life except for taking out the occasional public servant with a beebee gun.
Buster Turnbull was a truly terrible mail carrier, Mama told Zoë when she grounded her, but shooting him was just un-neighborly and not the kind of activity she wanted her daughters to be associated with. Certainly Buster needed to be taken in hand and reminded that neither snow nor rain was supposed to keep him from handing over the stuff people sent us, and his unfortunate habit of reading postcards out loud as he went on his rounds had annoyed all of us, and not one of us was amused when he got tired of postcards and started flat-out opening our mail and shouting it to the world, but Zoë was amused the least because he liked reading her stuff the best.
“Dear Zoë,” he’d read at the top of his lungs when my sister would get a letter from Nick. “Every night I sit here and think about all the things we did to each other naked on your back porch and I get hot all over again.”
“Fine goings on,” Buster would call out before he’d read on, sounding like some hell-fire Baptist preacher looking to stir up trouble and stop pleasure. “Good girls wouldn’t get letters like this, and Miss Zoë McKenzie shouldn’t be either and I am just shocked that she is even though she goes around looking so sweet and pretty and all.” He didn’t get around women much since he looked like a peeled egg and had a personality to match, so he had no clue what kind of letters good girls got or didn’t get, but that didn’t stop Buster from making Zoë’s life particular hell.
I could remember when Buster had been sort of fun, announcing what we were getting as he came up our steps, like previews of coming attractions at the movies. “Just in time for your birthday, Quinn,” he’d holler to me. “Kindly old Aunt Betsy has sent you a letter and I bet there’s a check in it.” Later on, he started holding the envelopes up to the sun so he could see how much the check was for, but of course that didn’t work because people always send checks in cards so it doesn’t look so cold and heartless sending money instead of a present, and I’m sure that must have been frustrating for him, trying to see into people’s lives and getting shut out by Hallmark. Maybe that’s why he started opening the mail; it just got too frustrating trying to see through the envelopes. Never getting any mail of his own, Buster probably just figured that he had the right to see ours since he was delivering it.
Opening other people’s mail is a federal crime, of course, but it probably didn’t seem like one to Buster. People never think what they’re doing is a crime because crime is always what other people are doing, but Zoë knew right off that Buster was breaking the law. “Quinn, we have to turn him in,” she told me after Buster had read the hot-sex-on-the-porch letter out loud while Mrs. Armbruster down the street stood on her steps with her mouth open, soaking up every word, ready to repeat it to Mrs. Mueller and Mrs. Papacjik and Mrs. Jerome, and we both knew that from there the news would percolate to Mama and there would go Zoë’s chances of ever finding heaven on the back porch with Nick again, assuming Mama would ever let her out of the house at all as long as she lived. Really, I’d have been seriously pissed off at him, too, so I was behind her all the way when she reported him. Somebody down at the post office promised to look into it, but my big sister knew a run-around when she heard one. The only thing left for her to do was to take matters into her own hands.
Unfortunately for Buster, he chose the next day to open a package from Nick which was full of old movies that Nick wanted Zoë to watch instead of going out with other guys and doing god knows what. “Videos for adult viewing,” Buster bellowed without reading the titles so he could make the worst possible call; “porn through the postal se
rvice.” Whereupon Zoë picked up the beebee gun she’d loaded with salt pellets, and went out on the front porch, and aimed just below the mail bag, and said, “Buster, you have just violated your last piece of U.S. mail,” and opened fire, yelling, “Dance, gringo,” just like she’d seen in the Western Nick had sent her. Xenia heard Buster’s screams, they were that loud, but then you can imagine what that salt felt like going through Buster’s pants. You can’t imagine the sound he made, though; it was like a pig being pulled through a meat grinder backwards.
Zoë says she’s not sorry, and Mama grounded her because of it, but Buster’s not reading our mail anymore, so things are a lot better here.
Appendix B: Redbook/Condensed Version of “Just Wanted You To Know”
This shorter version of “Just Wanted You To Know” was published in the August 2000 issue of Redbook, and my favorite thing about it is that a woman wrote in to the magazine:
“Recently, my husband left me for our infant son’s baby-sitter. Your fiction selection, Jennifer Crusie’s “Just Wanted You to Know” (August), kept me laughing while I made the transition from a tear-stained wreck to a woman who finally realized that she’d been given a second chance at a better life. I’m even going to send a copy to my soon-to-be ex-husband for his reading enjoyment!”
That’s the stuff that makes you glad you’re a writer.
Dear Ronnie,
I am trying to be calm and understanding here, but Darla told me yesterday after church that the reason you didn’t come home Saturday night—and I was so worried, Ronnie, I even drove out to the hardware store to see if you were out there maybe having a heart attack in the parking lot—was because you went off with Barbara Niedemeyer from the First National. She told me that, and all the breath went right out from my body, and the whole world swung around. And then I remembered that all I needed to do was faint in Saint Mark’s vestibule and everybody in Tibbett would know, not to mention Mama, and Darla was holding my hand so tight that my wedding rings cut right into my skin, and the pain brought me back. But Ronnie, it almost broke my heart to hear news like that, and then Barbara called this morning to say you’d be back in two weeks to pick up your things and the Mustang once the two of you got back from the vacation you’re taking. Twenty-six years of marriage, and you go to Michigan with a bank teller and don’t even call to tell me yourself. I couldn’t believe it, it hurt so much.
I just sat there with the phone in my hand until Darla came by to pick me up for work and said, “I have been trying to call you for half an hour, why are you holding that phone?” so I hung up. And the phone rang again right away, and it was Darrin Mueller saying you’d asked him to look in on me and make sure I was all right, and I knew you still cared about me, Ronnie. I knew you had to love me still, and that’s what I told Darla, and she looked like she wanted to say something but she didn’t.
And then I had to go in to work because I had Leona Cooper’s perm to do at ten. You don’t know how hard it was going in there with Darla and all those other hairdressers. Then Darla came over to the house after work and was really nice again, which was even harder because you know Darla, it takes a lot to make her nice, so I knew she really felt bad for me. She said I could stay with her and Max, but I don’t want to, Ronnie. I want to be here with you where I’ve been for twenty-six years—ever since Daddy died and you said we should get married right away so you could take care of me forever—and this is where you belong, too. So what I’m thinking is that maybe this is just you afraid you’re getting old and the good times are over. And I know what you mean because some nights when we’re both sitting on the sectional, watching the news and you’re moaning about how the Bengals have screwed up again, sometimes then I wonder what happened to us, and how much fun we used to be, and why we aren’t any more. And I’m thinking that maybe this is something you need to do to feel young again for a minute, and that maybe it would be a good thing if I was to be understanding about this because I think that part of what’s wrong with this country today is that people get rid of their marriages too easy. I mean this is a really bad patch we’re going through here, but I’m not going to give up just because you’re having a hot flash, not after twenty-six years, I’m not.
So what I’m hoping is that you’ll realize what you’re missing out on and remember all we’ve been together and how much your family means to you, and then you’ll come on back home where you belong. We can work this out, Ronnie, don’t you think we can’t.
Your loving wife,
Debbie
PS: I wrote you this letter two days ago, Ronnie, but then I had to stop because everything was too awful, and I sat down and cried which is why my name is a little bit blurry there at the end. Then Darla came over, but she wasn’t much help since when I told her again about how I understood that you had needed to work through this mid-life crisis, she said, “Debbie, stop telling me what that jerk needs and tell me what you need,” and I said, “I need my husband back.” And she said, “Why?” and I said, “Because he’s my husband, damn it,” and she said, “Well, as much as I hate him and hope he dies, if that’s the only reason you need him, I can kind of see why he left.” And that wasn’t a help, Ronnie, it really wasn’t.
Then yesterday when I got home from work, Mama was parked in the driveway. She got out of the car and said, “I heard it, Deborah Jo, but I don’t believe it. You tell me it’s a lie.” Then she started in about how Headapohl women got widowed not divorced, and how she was not going to be the mother of a scandal. She said, “You just made some mistakes, that’s all, Debbie,” and I said it wasn’t exactly my idea for you to go north with a bank teller, and she said that was my fault for having a career instead of staying home and fixing you hot dinners the way she’d raised me to. I said, “Mama, I don’t think he’s up in Michigan with Barbara Niedemeyer because she’s fixing him hot dinners, I truly don’t,” and she said, “Deborah Jo Headapohl, it is that kind of mouthy attitude that makes a man leave home.”
Then the phone rang, and it was Darla, and I said, “Darla, I can’t talk now, Mama’s here,” and she hung up. Then Mama went on about how you were a good provider, and that you’d surely come to your senses once you got a good look at Barbara in the daylight because her pores were a disgrace, and on and on until Darla drove up wearing her T-shirt that says “Jesus is Coming, Look Busy.” She said, “Hi, Mama, I was just going to Krogers and stopped to see if Debbie was needing anything, like maybe some rat poison for that faithless, sorry skunk she married.” Mama said, “You are not going to the grocery in that shirt, Darla Jean Headapohl, what would the neighbors think?” Darla said, “Well, I am going to,” and drove off, and Mama got in her car to follow her. I know you don’t like Darla much, but there are times when I truly love her. Even though she rolls her eyes when I say that I’m understanding why you’re doing this.
But the thing is, I lied, Ronnie, because I am really not understanding this at all. I do not understand how you can cheat on me because I was always true to you, even that time last year when Darrin Mueller—yes, your best friend Darrin Mueller—put his hand on my knee and told me that I was the kind of wife every man dreamed of having, and that you didn’t appreciate me. And then he told me he had ways of appreciating a woman like me, and he told me some of them, and they were interesting, I must say. But I said, “Darrin, I appreciate the suggestions and the imagination it took to come up with them, but I belong to Ronnie Luterbein forever.” That’s what I said, Ronnie. That’s how much I love you. And then you go to Michigan with Barbara Niedemeyer, of all people.
So I’ve been sitting here, thinking about what Darrin said, and I think what I’m going to do is, I’m going to show up at the hardware store at closing time when you’ve got back from Mackinac with nothing under my coat but my black lace demi-bra and garter belt. And I know I’ve put on a few pounds over the years, but I still have one of the finest butts in Tibbett, Ohio, and I am a D-cup. And I know what you’re going to do when you see that demi-br
a with me in it, Ronnie, because I have known you for a long time, and I don’t care how old I am, I can still make you come crawling to me any time I want, don’t you think I can’t. And then later on, when we’re back together—and I know we will be—I’m going to show you this letter just so you know I always had you the whole time no matter what you thought.
Still your wife,
Debbie
PPS: I changed my mind about that demi-bra, Ronnie.
After I wrote those words last Wednesday, I started thinking about you and Barbara, and it made me a little mad. And I kept on thinking and I got a little madder, and now it’s Sunday, and I’m thinking a whole lot of things.
For one thing, I’m thinking you’re son of a bitch for leaving me. I’m middle-aged, too, damn it, and I’m not going around Lake Huron with bank tellers, am I? No, I am not. I am doing my job as your wife, which I have to tell you for the past couple of years has not been that much of a picnic, Ronnie, and if you had any kind of human being in you, you wouldn’t be doing that either. You think it’s tough being a middle-aged man? You try being a middle-aged woman who’s a D-cup. Gravity is a sin, Ronnie, it really is. And you’re no picture yourself, but all you do is slap your flab and say, “Just that much more of me to love, Debbie, honey,” and I swear, sometimes I just want to say, “I don’t need any more of you to love, Ronnie. I’ve got more of you to love than I want right now.” I got so mad I couldn’t even sleep last night, and I got up at three o’clock and ate a bag of Cheetos, standing right in front of the TV, in the spot where you always yell at me to move. I stood right there and ate the whole bag, watching Harrison Ford blow something up, and it felt good.
Then this morning Darla came over to see if I was okay, and I was going to tell her about the Cheetos, but then Darrin Mueller stopped by to mow the grass. I said, “That’s sweet, Darrin,” because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. And he said, “Glad to do it for you, Debbie,” and Darla sort of snorted but he didn’t hear. Darrin got out the mower and took his Tibbett High School Football Coach shirt off, and Darla said, “Well, he is something to look at, isn’t he?”