“WELL?” MARILYN SAYS, handing Eric the lists she’s been working on. One, a number of hors d’oeuvres she wants to prepare after their son goes out; the other, details of the parents who’ll be attending, their children’s names written in brackets as descriptors. Three couples will join them in tonight’s endeavour, perfect for the initial meeting. It’s a number that shouldn’t overwhelm Eric anyway and that’s worth its weight in something.
“I think it’s… it seems great,” Eric says, giving her an exaggerated thumbs-up.
When Marilyn first told her husband the idea he joked about it of course, his way of handling everything he doesn’t like. “Sounds awesome,” he told her. “Angry parents waving bludgeons in the air. You, at the front, urging them on.” Then he proceeded to act out the scene in an admittedly decent Churchill accent, smacking the counter with an umbrella and smoking an invisible cigar. Marilyn laughed at first and then immediately cursed herself. The last thing she wanted was to encourage him.
“Have you decided what you’re going to wear?”
“Ah, yes. The battle garb.”
She ignores the bait. “I think we should start the evening with a roundtable introduction. The only couple we know is Lisa and Vince and I want this to feel like a retreat, a place where people can talk freely. It would be nice if everyone participated.”
“Sure would.”
“I mean it, Eric. Everyone.”
He nods and scratches his chin. In theory, he’s being supportive, something other wives would be jealous of. But it’s also true she’s alone in this while he sits there, oblivious. Listening but not really listening, repeating what she wants him to say. Being very good at pretending.
Paul stomps down the stairs, cutting off her thoughts. She hides the guest list as he enters the kitchen. “Where are you going tonight, sweetie?” she asks.
“Downtown, maybe. I don’t know.” Paul grabs some food from the fridge, hardly slowing down to flip his bangs out of his eyes.
“Your plans?”
“Mom, we don’t make plans. We just do things.” He stuffs an apple in his pocket and puts on his shoes. “I’ll see you later, though,” he says, slamming the door behind him, predictably.
Marilyn grips the edge of the counter until her fingers blanch. Eric, beside her, is nodding already, pre-emptively agreeing with whatever she might think.
“Do you see,” she begins, suddenly so frustrated she has to fight back tears, “why this is so important?”
PAUL LIFTS A STONE from the rock wall outside, liberating his package of cigarettes. If his parents knew he smoked, even though it’s hardly ever, they’d freak. They’d yell at him at first, like normal parents, but then his mom would want to analyze the situation, get to the root of the problem. And his dad would stand beside her, agreeing and shaking his head like someone just died instead of smoked. That’s not an exaggeration either. Paul’s life. He can hardly blame his friends for crapping all over him about it.
But right now at least he has something better to think about. As soon as he gets downtown, he’s meeting Fanta.
It’s nothing crazy, but she approached him and that’s a good sign; girls don’t generally fall all over themselves for guys like Paul. The last time he even asked a girl out was ages ago, Ashley Winters in gym class, and he failed so incredibly it became a legend. He couldn’t even speak. Mumbling like he had a mouthful of bees or just had his wisdom teeth pulled. She finally asked him, “Are you okay, Paul? Have you been in a fight or something?”
My God. All he could do was walk away at that point. And now, a year later, Jake Pittman still says, “Have you been in a fight or something?” whenever Paul even thinks about talking to a girl. There’s no way to forget about it, ever. It’s become a thing.
Pitty loves stuff like that, stuff that makes other people look stupider than him. He’s the guy who invented spit-war and the shiner game and he wears t-shirts with the word “fuck” hidden inside Chinese symbols. Paul only calls him friend because to call him anything else means you’ve opened yourself up for a crotch-kick or a blindside punch to the head. Who needs that kind of attention?
Paul stops at the end of the driveway, examining the worn-out package of Player’s in his hand. Fanta doesn’t smoke!
In fact, he’s seen her make faces when other people light up, squinting and waving her hands back and forth to clear the air. “Right out of the gate, Paul,” he whispers. “Almost, almost.” He turns around and stashes the smokes under the rock again. He doesn’t even like cigarettes anyway, kind of funny when you think about it.
That’s exactly what he needs to do. Think! If he does that, he’ll be fine. If he takes things slow, doesn’t talk a lot, nods at what Fanta has to say, then this whole night could roll out okay. And Paul might be talked about at school as just another normal guy instead of a gigantic ass-wipe. What a change to the program that would be.
“WELCOME,” ERIC SAYS. It’s Lisa and Vince from next door. Eric hugs Lisa and shrugs his shoulders apologetically at Vince. The night has just begun and already he feels like he should buy them a box of donuts or one of those balloons that say, Forgive Me? If this were a normal Friday evening, Eric would be sitting in front of the TV with a bowl of ice cream softened from the microwave. Vince too, probably, at his own place, in his own favourite chair. But there’s nothing like that on the agenda tonight. Tonight—as Marilyn put it—they’re socializing with purpose.
“Follow me,” Eric says. “It’s started.”
He leads them to the living room where Marilyn has arranged the seats into a semicircle. The table in the middle holds a tray of crackers, a red pepper dip, and some wrinkled black olives that look far too much like deer pellets for Eric’s liking. There’s a pitcher of fruit juice on the console, some bottled water, a rarely-used ice bucket. And sitting there like they’re all in detention together, a group of people Eric has nothing in common with.
But if this is what it takes to keep Marilyn’s head above water, this is what they’ll do. After all, happy wife, happy life. Something like that.
“Vince, Lisa. I’m so glad you could come,” Marilyn says. She guides the neighbours to their place and begins the introductions.
Tim and Joan live in the house on the corner. Eric’s seen them before from a distance, gardening like it’s the Olympics and doing all the home maintenance projects he should do more of himself. They’re a funny couple, both speaking in the same sleepy monotone and wearing nearly-identical glasses—thin wiry things that remind Eric of the scientist on The Muppet Show from when Paul was a kid and a night like this, inconceivable.
The other couple, Kip and Christine, own the big stone house a few blocks over. Kip’s hair hangs past his shoulders and he’s wearing a white t-shirt, a number of thin metal bracelets on each wrist. If Kip hadn’t already said he was an accountant, Eric would have pegged him as a musician living in one of those camper vans, a special shelf to hold his bong collection. Christine fits the mould too. Flowery dress, beaded hair, and silver rings on her toes that catch the light whenever she crosses and uncrosses her legs.
Then there’s Vince and Lisa, the neighbours who usually come over for things like barbeques instead of this. Lisa’s pretty quiet but when she and Marilyn get wound up their conversations can go on for ages, long after Vince and Eric have run out of things to say. That’s fine with them though. They’re happy to sip beer in peace while the discussion continues around them. Watching heat rise off the concrete patio, ants walking along the edge of the grass. Life, happening.
“So now that we’re all acquainted, why don’t we jump in?” Marilyn says. “What’s wrong with our teenagers? Who’d like to go first?”
The room goes silent as though Marilyn just asked the group for a stool sample. And Eric knows—God how he knows—it’s his job to help her out.
Being married is like living in a rowboat. One person gives orders while the other bails endlessly. He knows his role in the operation and he’s fine with that arrangement. In fact, he’s fine with most things in life and can’t remember the last time he had a serious problem with anything, ever. Not unless Marilyn brought it up first.
Just as he’s about to break the silence, Kip puts his hand up. “I don’t know if it’s appropriate,” he says, “but we’ve brought some wine.” He lifts a bottle from the bag at his feet. “Sometimes it’s easier to talk while sharing a cup of vino.”
Eric knows Marilyn’s lips are doing that weird thing they do when she can’t say what she wants to say; he doesn’t need to look.
“To grease the wheels,” Kip goes on, his bracelets jingling as he tilts the bottle back and forth.
“Well,” Marilyn begins, “I suppose…”
Eric shrugs in a what else can we do? sort of way. Then he goes to get some glasses from the cupboard. He takes the long way around to the kitchen though, so Marilyn can’t see the grin on his face. No sense pressing his luck.
PAUL FINDS FANTA STANDING outside The Brickyard Pizza and right away his lungs feel like they’re wrapped in elastic bands. He calms himself, getting his heart back to normal before walking over. Then he tries to wave and his finger gets caught on a thread in his pocket. It looks like he’s having a seizure.
“Hi, Paul,” Fanta says. “You good?”
“Good,” he answers, managing to free his hand. “How good are you?”
He closes his eyes and thinks about going home.
Fanta smiles and says, “I’m pretty good, I’d say. Care for some pizza?”
“Okay,” Paul answers. He forces himself not to say anything else as she opens the door and they go inside.
Fanta’s pretty tall for a girl and way smarter than anybody else in Grade Ten. She usually says whatever’s on her mind too which makes her less popular than she could be. Paul likes that about her though—it means she doesn’t hang out with the people who tend to make fun of him on a regular basis. She keeps looking at him after they sit down and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He folds the menu, waves across the room at someone he doesn’t recognize, rubs a black mark off his shoe. Picks at the logo on his napkin.
“Paul?” Fanta says. “I’m over here. It’s okay to look at me on a date.”
Paul expects to see a scowl on her face, the same look his mother’s been giving him lately. Instead, Fanta’s grinning and it’s not even weird at all. It feels normal, like they’ve been doing this for months.
After they order, they have a long conversation about bizarre pizza toppings—crickets, fried eggs, smoked reindeer—and as far as he knows, he doesn’t screw anything up. When the food arrives he eats slowly, another thing he told himself to do, and wipes his mouth a lot. He laughs at the jokes she makes and not because he’s nervous, but because she’s funny. When they’re done, Fanta reaches over and touches his hand; it feels like someone just stirred his insides with a cattle prod.
“Your name is cool,” he says, trying to distract himself from the waves of anxiety in his chest.
“You know my folks named me after a pop, right?”
“I like pop,” he says. And instead of laughing, she squeezes his hand. For a second he thinks about putting his other hand on top of hers but that might be sweaty and stupid, so he doesn’t.
“They’re talking about us tonight, you know,” she goes on.
“What?”
“Our parents. They’re at your house right now having a meeting about how to handle teenagers. A support group or something.”
“Oh my God, I’m sorry,” Paul says. “My Mom’s like that. She has all kinds of problems, I can’t even begin to say… and she’s…”
“Hey, don’t worry. My folks are into that kind of stuff and besides, they packed a couple bottles of wine.”
“Okay,” Paul says. He nods like he understands which he completely doesn’t.
“So they’ll probably be at it a while. Most of the night I expect,” she goes on, taking a long, sexy sip from her straw. “And that means neither one of us has to be home anytime soon. Now do we?”
“EXACTLY!” MARILYN SAYS. She makes sure Eric’s paying attention, and then focuses on Tim and Joan who have the floor. They’ve been describing their son, Julian, how he’s been removing himself from their lives bit by bit, a kind of reverse pointillism. The similarity between their situations is precisely what Marilyn had hoped for, a confirmation, something more substantial than Eric’s usual approach: Is that what you think, honey? I think that too. If she has to give credit to a couple glasses of chardonnay for this breakthrough, well, so be it.
“One last thing,” Tim says. “Our son won’t do his chores anymore.”
“And the scowl he gives when we ask… It’s un-Godly,” Joan adds. They hold hands and take their seats again.
In her peripheral vision, Marilyn sees—or maybe imagines—Eric rolling his eyes.
“Thank you both,” she tells them. “Very much.”
If it were appropriate, she’d give them a hug right now. One for Lisa and Vince as well, who’ve just finished discussing their daughter, Chloe. She’s been so closed up lately it’s like they’re “visiting her in prison” when they try to have a conversation. Marilyn feels bad for them, of course. But at the same time, she’s overjoyed at the same-boat-ness of it all.
Even Kip and Christine, the couple Marilyn wasn’t sure about, shared their difficulties. They employ a pick-your-battles philosophy with their daughter, Fanta, but recently they’ve had to bite their tongues almost every day. “Slow down, breathe. Take a mental diazepam,” was how Christine put it while Kip stood beside her, drinking wine and adding one-line colour commentary. “You know what they say about brains and assertiveness…” And, “Just like when I was a teenager, back when the earth was cooling.”
When Marilyn took her turn, she spoke of Paul’s attitude, of course. But then she found herself talking about the mistakes she and Eric made over the years, going back to where it all began, when Paul was nine. He wanted to quit his swimming lessons and she and Eric let him. They thought he’d regret it and learn from the experience, the concept of natural consequences. But now she knows it was nothing but lazy parenting. Paul didn’t think about outcomes, he was nine for God’s sake. He used the free time to watch cartoons and the only thing he learned was how to get his own way. That moment, plainly, was the power-shift.
While she spoke, Eric nodded at all the right moments, refilled glasses with the second bottle of wine Kip and Christine brought. Said, “That’s right. Uh huh. Of course,” going through his typical, altar-boy motions. But none of it had any meaning, like everything else in Marilyn’s life.
What he really needs to do is contribute something new to the conversation, something significant, something of his own. And yes, right about now would be nice.
“Eric? Would you like to add anything,” she prompts, “to close off the first part of the evening?”
“Absolutely,” he answers, making the hairs on Marilyn’s neck stand up. He clears his throat and begins immediately. “There’s not a lot to say that hasn’t already been covered. But there is one word I haven’t heard tonight, a word I’d use to describe our son more than any other. It’s a small word, a powerful one, and it sums up life at our house perfectly.”
He pauses to take a sip and Marilyn knows exactly what he’s doing: executing comic timing. She’s an idiot. And she’s just given him an audience.
“What’s the word?” Kip asks, playing into Eric’s hands perfectly.
“Ah, yes. The word. Well, that word is loud!”
He yells it and everyone, except Marilyn, bursts into laughter.
“Our son can turn anything into noise,” he says. “He closes cupboard doors with enough force to cut a snake in half, walks around like he’s putting out spot fires or auditioning for the army. It’s like we’re living under a dance studio in a town where all the children have wooden feet.”
Eric does a stationary march. He looks into an invisible fridge and slams the door with both hands, kicking it for emphasis.
“Oh my God. That’s perfect,” Vince says.
“You nailed it,” Kip adds.
Before he can go further, Marilyn interrupts, taking the focus off her jackass husband. “Thank you, Eric,” she says, more abruptly than needed. “And on that note, I think we could probably all use a little break.”
AFTER DINNER, FANTA LEADS PAUL to the park beside the lake. There’s a playground with a tire swing, a slide, and a climbing frame Paul fell off once when he was ten, fracturing his arm in two places. The doctor gave him a cast which Paul figured his friends would sign at school the next day. Instead, they held him down while Pitty drew pictures of cartoon penises all over it, complete with stick legs and big smiling faces. He called it the “cast of dicks” and Paul had to practically drench the thing in Liquid Paper before he went home that day.
But now he’s walking through that same playground with that same arm wrapped around Fanta’s waist. And this is turning out to be the best night of his life so far. No contest.
They stop at the shoreline gazebo where the old people in town like to watch fish jump or fat blue dragonflies sweeping the water like search planes. The lake itself is small and man-made but it gets de-weeded and stocked with rainbow trout every few years by the outdoor society. Right in the middle, there’s an aerator—a giant version of the kind you see in aquariums—humming in the dark. To the left, a small beach with a swimming area and an old wooden dock bobbing up and down in the waves like a dead animal.
Fanta pulls a blanket from her bag and lays it out on the gazebo floor. “Shall we sit,” she says, “and be civilized?”
“Sounds divine,” Paul answers, using an accent that comes off more like punch-drunk than the British he was going for.
“In keeping with civility…” She lifts a bottle of wine and two plastic glasses from her bag. She hands the corkscrew to Paul and he holds it for a minute, panicked.
The only time he’s had anything to drink before was a vodka cooler last year on Canada Day. It tasted like something you’d put in a hummingbird feeder, and when the guys weren’t looking he dumped it on the grass.
“We’ll do it together,” Fanta says, taking Paul’s hand and guiding it over the bottle. They clasp fingers and twist the opener into the top. When the cork comes out, Paul points the bottle away, expecting bubbles to spurt out all over the place. Then he realizes it’s not that kind of wine.
Fanta doesn’t acknowledge his mistake though, and Paul shrugs his shoulders and carries on. He doesn’t even mind that she knows he’s a total rookie. It feels like he could tell her anything, be an idiot all night and she’d still have the same reassuring glow in her cheeks. What that means exactly, he hasn’t figured out. But right now, sitting with her on the blanket… who cares?
“WELL, THAT WAS STUPID,” Eric whispers, splashing water on his face in the bathroom. After Marilyn called the recess she disappeared into the kitchen, giving him a look that could have dropped a water buffalo from across a field.
Seemed appropriate in the moment though, trying to lighten things up. The others made it sound like their lives were ending, like they’d been stricken with a plague instead of an adolescent. But being shocked by anything your teenager does is like being surprised when your ass feels wet in the shower. Even Eric knows that and he’s not exactly one for contemplation.
As for Paul, he’s not a bad kid, not even close. Sure, he talks back a little but he’s a teenager. Besides, Eric gets the impression he takes a lot of guff from the guys at school. Letting off steam at home is probably just what he needs right now and in the grand scheme of things, isn’t that their job as parents anyway? To be the support group when all else fails?
None of that, however, changes the fact Eric just screwed up and has to apologize to Marilyn for being a jerk. Even if it turns out he’s a jerk who’s been right about everything all along. Happy wife, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
He opens the bathroom door and Marilyn’s right there, leaning against the wall in the hallway. She doesn’t look particularly angry but that’s probably a bad thing. They’re alone for the moment though, and since this isn’t going to get easier later on, now’s as good a time as any.
“Hey,” he says, touching her arm. “I might have got carried away back there.”
Marilyn doesn’t react and her silence makes him feel like he’s at the bottom of a pool. Finally she says, “Well at least you participated. That’s something anyway.”
“Really?”
She walks past him into the bathroom. “No, Eric. Not really.”
PAUL GIVES HIS EMPTY GLASS to Fanta and she puts it on the bench beside hers. He didn’t like the wine but neither did she and that made them both laugh, spilling the rest of the bottle on the gazebo floor. They had fun though, toasting the sunset, the lake, the mosquitoes, and anything else they could think of. Paul also toasted Fanta at the end, saying she looked even prettier outside at night, like stars reflecting on the water. You could have made nachos with the cheese from that line, but she responded with, “I think we should stay out here forever then, because I like what you just said.”
In fact, she likes everything he says, and it makes him feel safe. A weird word to describe what she does to him but it’s exactly the truth. The only other place he feels safe these days is at home, if you can imagine that. Even though his parents are defective, at least they’re not pulling for him to fall on his face all the time. Most of his friends, it seems, are just waiting for Paul to shit the bed again, become the next funny line. He doesn’t like to compare Fanta to his parents of course, that’s completely gross. But safe is one word he’d use, as messed up as that might…
Fanta leans in and puts her lips against his; he pulls away, thinking he did something wrong. She takes his hand and places it on her hip. Then she leans him back, carefully, so he’s lying on the blanket. He tries to breathe, to stop his heart from exploding and ruining everything. It keeps going though, faster and faster. And then she’s on top of him. Kissing him and showing him what to do.
“Well, would you look at that,” someone says, breathing heavily in the darkness beyond the gazebo. “Small Paul getting a tutorial in the park.”
“I’M SORRY YOU HAD TO SEE THAT,” Marilyn says to the women, all of whom have gathered with her in the kitchen. She starts taking the plastic wrap off the next course, a tray of glazed tarts.
“No need to apologize,” Lisa says.
“Yeah. Boys will be boys. And men will be boys,” Christine adds. “Just be happy they’re not dialling escort services or selling cocaine from the basement. Honestly, you can’t expect much more.”
Joan nods. “Tim does that sometimes, too,” she says.
“Escorts or cocaine?” Christine points a finger at her. “Girl, you’ve been holding out on us.”
They laugh, even Marilyn, and it’s a relief, the opposite feeling she gets when Eric makes a joke. It has to do with intention, she realizes. The purpose of his jokes is to make himself look funny, not to make her feel better. That’s the difference right there.
She takes a steel bowl out of the freezer and pours heavy cream and sugar into it while the others continue talking. She whips the mixture with a hand blender, watching it stiffen, turning into something solid. When it’s done, she spoons it into the ceramic serving dish resting beneath the window.
The men are in the backyard getting some air, standing next to the fence. Eric rubs his temples, his eyebrows. Kneads the back of his neck like he just finished a marathon. Good, Marilyn thinks. She doesn’t want to be the type of person who says he deserves it. But he deserves it.
She watches Kip put his arm around Eric and point to Vince and Lisa’s house. Then the three of them converge and boost Vince over the top of the fence. He disappears through the backdoor into his house.
Marilyn turns to see if the other women are watching but they’ve migrated to the living room, taking the pastry trays and cutlery with them. Outside, Vince returns. He passes something over the fence before climbing back across. Another two bottles of wine, one white, one red.
Eric collects the bottles. And Marilyn, her whole body shaking, brings the bowl of whipped cream into the other room.
IT’S PITTY—OF COURSE—standing on the chip path with a scruffy guy Paul’s never seen before. They come over and sit on the bench, each holding a bottle of Coke presumably saturated with some vile mix. Then they give each other this sly look like they’re part of a secret asshole-club, and Pitty lights a smoke.
“Don’t stop on our account,” he says. The guy beside him slaps his leg a few times and fake-loads an invisible shotgun.
“Fanta and I were just hanging out, Pitty. That’s all.”
“Well, something was hanging out I suppose,” Pitty says. “Flopping out, peeking out, poking out. Whatever.”
The sidekick-guy laughs again, makes an inchworm gesture with his finger. He takes a swig and Paul notices a long scar on his neck, disappearing under the collar of his shirt. He checks to see if Fanta noticed too, but sees something else in her face instead. Disappointment maybe? Frustration? Regret? And suddenly a familiar panic rises inside him like eels coiling around his rib cage.
He points his finger at the two idiots, and—without thinking too much about it—says, “Leave us alone. Okay?”
Pitty stands up immediately, puts his Coke bottle on the floor. “I’m sorry. Can you repeat that? I guess I couldn’t hear properly over the sound of me punching you in the head.”
“I said… leave us… alone. Okay?” Paul tries hard not to hyperventilate.
Pitty shifts his weight from one foot to the other, his face smug as a hoard of locusts. “Or what?” he says.
Paul doesn’t respond.
“Leave. You. Alone. Or. What?” Pitty continues, poking his finger into Paul’s chest with each word. Paul braces for the inevitable, something more substantial than a finger-jab. But all of a sudden Fanta steps between them, throwing everybody off guard.
“Or this,” she says to Pitty, her voice surprisingly calm. “My father, who’s a lawyer, brings you up on charges. Voyeurism, public mischief, uttering threats, and maybe one or two other things I haven’t thought of yet. I have a very good imagination. And I’m just getting started.”
Paul can see the hamster wheel turning in Pitty’s head. He’s been to the cop shop a couple times already this year, once for minor-league theft and then that night he set the garbage bin on fire beside the high school. After the last incident his counsellor told him, “The general rule is three strikes and you’re out, Mr. Pittman. That means you’re one fuck-up away from having to exit the diamond. Understand?”
Whether Fanta knows about that or not doesn’t matter; Paul’s pretty sure her father isn’t a lawyer.
“No need to get legal,” Pitty says finally. He waves his hand in the air and steps backwards. “We’re just leaving anyway. Go ahead and finish your game of hide-and-go-fuck-yourselves or whatever you two shit-birds were doing.”
He stumbles out of the gazebo, fingering them over his shoulder as he goes. The sidekick-guy does the same and they both disappear along the path towards town.
Before Paul can say anything or even start breathing again, Fanta kisses him for what seems like forever. It’s almost too much to process.
After they stop, she outlines his lips, slowly, with the tip of her finger. “And now that all the weirdness is over and the night, still young,” she says, “what do you say to a little moonlight dip?”
ERIC FOLLOWS MARILYN as she hands out the tarts and cream. He offers water to everyone but doesn’t go anywhere near the new bottles of wine. He’ll let Kip fumble that grenade. He knows it isn’t enough to have declined another glass himself but it can’t have hurt. He did it loudly too, so Marilyn wouldn’t miss it. And now whenever he walks by, he makes sure to touch her arm or her lower back. So she knows he’s still there.
“Perfect tarts, Marilyn,” Lisa says. “Recipe please.”
“Thank you. But they’re pretty easy.”
“Don’t be humble, honey. You’re a divine chef,” Eric says. Then he adds, “I’m a lucky, lucky man.”
Marilyn ignores him. She asks, “Would anyone like coffee before we continue?”
“I’m good with wine,” Kip says, refilling everyone’s glasses.
Marilyn sighs. She collects the dirty dishes and goes back into the kitchen.
“I’ll help,” Eric calls out.
He finds her in front of the sink, rinsing plates, and walks up behind her. “Don’t,” she tells him before he even gets close.
Eric stands there. He’s not really sure what to do so he does nothing. After a minute or so, Marilyn finally says, “Maybe it’s us who’re broken. Not Paul.”
Eric closes his eyes. More than anything he wants to put his arms around his wife, make everything better. But the question is does he want to do it for her or for him?
“I’ve been an asshole, and I want to be part of the team again,” he says. “You and me.”
Marilyn turns around but Eric doesn’t wait to hear what she might have to say. In fact, he’s a little bit afraid of it. Back in the living room, he collects the half-full bottles of wine and puts them off to the side while his wife watches from the doorway.
“Break’s over,” he says to the bewildered faces. “It’s my turn to speak again. For real this time.”
PAUL FOLLOWS FANTA into the lake. He’s naked, but doesn’t shield himself as he enters the water. And his blood is pumping so fast he hardly feels the coldness, even when it reaches his groin. Fanta, ahead of him, dives in and disappears. She pops up a few seconds later and starts swimming backwards. “Come on,” she says. In the darkness, Paul sees the moon shining off her skin.
“Be right there,” he answers, waving his hand like he’s signalling a helicopter. The water’s all the way to his chest now, touching his chin, and he launches his feet as he gets past the point where he can feel bottom.
Earlier, during the incident at the gazebo, he imagined his adrenaline firing at a hundred percent. But now that he’s here—alone with Fanta in the lake, both of them naked—it’s more than double that. She’s halfway to the dock already and Paul watches her arms rise and plunge, hardly making a ripple. She’s a terrific swimmer, no question about it. But he’s not. In fact, he’s already getting tired.
He changes kicks for a while, but when he does he starts to sink and some of the lake gets into his mouth. He struggles to get going again, to catch up before Fanta leaves him behind, before she disappears completely. And suddenly his heart… his heart doesn’t feel so good.
He remembers when he was young and his parents wanted him to take swimming lessons. He got that same tightness in his chest back then. A balled up mass of staples in his core, pumping into his veins and pinching through every inch of his body. He’s never told anyone about it before because as long as he avoided anything strenuous, he felt okay. Right now though, everything inside him feels like it’s being squeezed, then ripped apart. Squeezed. Ripped apart. Squeezed.
His head goes under and his lungs expand, trying to suck in air. He comes up coughing and spitting out water. He can’t hear any of it though, his sputtering, his splashing. All he hears is the rush of blood in his ears and the whirr of the aerator off to the side. He flips onto his back and tries to swim that way but the pain in his chest gets worse. He turns over again and clutches his arms to his body. And starts to sink.
Just before he goes under he sees Fanta pulling herself up on the dock. The long curve of her back, her beautiful skin. She turns and sees him struggling in the water, and she jumps back in. But she’s so far away. So incredibly far away…
When he’s fully submerged, he squeezes his legs to his chest to stop the pain and thinks about how his parents are going to hate him for this. Oh God. Oh God. They’re going to hate him forever.
MARILYN FEELS LIKE CRYING by the time Eric’s finished. She hugs him, squeezing tightly despite the fact it’s not in keeping with her role as moderator. She doesn’t care about that though. Or about anything. For the first time in years, she actually feels like things are going to be okay.
The others, led by Kip, begin to applaud at their embrace and the speech her husband just gave. And that does make her cry.
Eric pulls back. He smiles and whispers in her ear. She doesn’t quite hear it though; she’s distracted by a commotion outside the window. Lights flashing. A police car pulling up. And another one.
There’s someone familiar, Marilyn notices, sitting in the back of the nearest car. A girl she’s seen before from school a few times, one of Paul’s friends. She looks pretty upset, shaking her head and running her hands through her hair. The lights, flashing all over her face.
But is she alone in the car, this girl? Hard to tell with the windows fogged up and Marilyn’s eyes still wet with tears. She looks again, squinting hard. And yes, someone else. Right there in the seat beside her. She’s absolutely, positively sure of it.
Maybe.
“So what have our teenagers done now?” she says to the group, trying to quell the energy so she doesn’t lose this perfect moment. The clapping behind them abruptly stops.