Thirty

The house was buzzing when my mother and I arrived. All the out-of-town guests were there, about twenty of them, along with immediate family. Sophie waved from the kitchen and carried a casserole dish to the dining room table, which was laden with food and flowers and coffee urns and wine bottles. Pete walked around pouring champagne. Soft jazz played; people talked and laughed. It was a festival of activity.

Patrick was bringing pitchers of orange juice to the table when he saw me. His face shone and that made me very happy I’d come. He wore the turtleneck we’d bought together when he came to Chicago for lunch. It was soft heather-gray cashmere and looked gorgeous with charcoal gray pants, and the black loafers that shone within an inch of their lives. He shined them for me, I thought, and grinned at him. He grinned back. “No Michael?” he asked.

“He had a showing.”

Patrick hid his disappointment well.

“That boy works too hard,” my mother said, although on the way over I’d told her the reason for his brunch boycott.

“Hmmmph…” was all she’d said.

“So nice to see you this morning,” Patrick said, and kissed my cheek and then my mother’s. “You both look beautiful.”

“So do you,” I said. “Nice sweater.”

“Thanks. I can’t take all the credit. I had help picking it out.”

“Come on, everybody,” Sophie called. “Plates are on the buffet. Fill them and find a seat wherever. Holler if you need anything.”

Patrick ushered my mother to a seat on the sofa and said he’d make her a plate if she saved us seats. She said she would if he made her a mimosa.

“She’s great,” Patrick said as we walked away. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet your dad.”

Patrick’s closeness sent electric currents up my spine as we walked to the dining room.

“Where’d you stay last night?” I asked.

“Here,” he said. “On the foldout couch in the den. We were up till three this morning.” He laughed. “I haven’t done that since high school.” I thought of New Year’s Eve thirty years ago. “It was fun. Danielle and Chris were here until two-thirty and then had to boogie to grab their bags for a flight at six to Honolulu. They’re really fun. It’s been a kick getting to know Pete and Sophie’s girls.”

Sophie had made caramel-apple French toast for the brunch, and several casseroles were filled with her famous egg strata. There was crisp bacon, sausage, fruit salad and mimosas. Iris centerpieces from the wedding were scattered around the dining room.

“Jesus,” I said, “when did she have time to do all this?”

“Last night. She was like Rachael Ray on steroids, ordering us around like we were her sous-chefs.”

I was jealous that I hadn’t been part of the fun.

As we ate, my mother grilled Patrick about his life in Florida: what did he do, where did he live, how many kids did he have, did he exercise, did he cook, did he read the newspaper. I tried giving her a look to get her to let up but she ignored me. Patrick answered easily, not seeming to mind, or even to notice, really. He threw questions back at her when she left a millisecond of silence. “What’s your favorite movie?” “How’d you meet your husband?”

When he and I reached for the syrup at the same time, fingers touching, nearly spilling it, I felt my mother’s eyes on me, on us. She paused for a moment and then she said to him, “Did you ever think about getting married again?”

I slugged down the rest of my mimosa.

Tiffany wandered through the house snapping pictures, posing everyone in little groups. She tried to take a picture of my mother, Patrick and me but my mother said, “Oh, just take one of the two of them. I don’t like pictures of myself at my age,” and she got up and moved off. Patrick put his arm over my shoulder and we leaned our heads close. “Oh, that’s cute,” Tiffany said, looking at the display, then showing it to me. It was.

Tiffany’s hair was spiked today and her piercings were in their full glory, filled with shiny hoops and studs. Later she cornered me in the kitchen to tell me that Ryan had asked her to go steady.

“Oh, cool,” I said. “Did he give you a ring?” I remembered wearing Patrick’s class ring on a chain around my neck.

“A ring? No. But he changed his Facebook page to ‘In a relationship,’” she said, grinning. “He asked me to go to his prom.”

“Fun. You can wear your bridesmaid dress,” I said.

She made a face. “Or not,” she said. “I’m done with that thing.” Then her face softened and she touched my arm. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

“I love Patrick,” Tiffany said. “We all had so much fun last night.”

“I heard. He likes you, too.”

“He likes you, too,” she said.

“Why do you say that?”

“He talked about you all night. Asked all kinds of questions about you.”

“He did not,” I said, pleased.

“Did, too,” Sophie said, coming up behind me with a stack of dirty dishes and giving me a bump with her hip. She raised her eyebrows, Groucho Marx style. Tiffany snapped our picture as we laughed.

“Help me with the desserts, would you, Lib?” Sophie said, bringing out large, flat pastry boxes. I unwrapped the goodies—tiny zucchini muffins, chocolate squares with satiny frosting, cookies—and put them on plates, and Tiffany snapped another picture as I stuffed a muffin into my mouth. Then she went off in search of other photographic subjects, or maybe her “steady.”

Sophie said, “He was asking a lot of questions.”

“About what?”

“Oh, just about what you’d been up to all these years. What you liked to do. If you were going to marry Michael.”

“What’d you say to that one?”

“I told him to ask you.” She got small plates from the cupboard and the “Danielle and Christopher”–embossed napkins. “Are you?” she asked.

“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” I said. “Hey, did something happen last night when the guys were smoking their cigars?”

“Pete said there was a little tension but it wasn’t a big deal. Michael apparently made it clear he wasn’t about to bond with Patrick.”

“I suppose that’s to be expected,” I said.

“Kind of childish,” she said.

“He’s jealous. How would you feel if you were in his place?”

“Depends on if I had anything to worry about.” She piled silverware on a big black-lacquered tray. “Does he?”

“I guess he thinks he does.”

Sophie leaned on the granite countertop and looked me in the eye. “But does he?”

Sometimes when I look at Sophie’s face my heart swells with the familiarity of every angle, every line, how dear it is to me, how it holds all of our history. “I don’t know, Soph,” I said. “I really don’t know.”