Engaging Men (33 page)

She snorted. “Yeah. They’re a good argument for not getting married,” she said. “Probably why I can’t bring myself to do it. Do you see the way he tears at her?”

I wouldn’t call it tearing. But Mr. Stevens did have a habit of dismissing almost everything Mrs. Stevens said, as if her opinions and concerns were nothing to him.

Kind of like Kirk dismissed mine, I thought with another shiver, as I remembered the way Kirk had looked at me when I’d dragged him in to watch that harrowing report on airplane maintenance last night. But I was a bit neurotic. I was lucky he even put up with me. Maybe his calm, organized approach would balance me out once we were married.

Or cancel me out, a little voice whispered.

“So you and Kirk talking about getting married?” Kayla asked, once again picking the thoughts right out of my head.

“Sort of,” I said, stubbing out my now-finished cigarette on the stoop.

She laughed. “Yeah, my brother is a tough nut to crack. I think Susan really wanted to marry him. But I don’t think he was ready yet. He was working in a job he didn’t like, and I don’t think he’d figured out what he really wanted. But now he’s got his own business, and it sounds like he’s doing well from what he was saying over dinner. He’s got some big client on the horizon.”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking of that damn Norwood proposal, which was just about destroying our relationship. Thank God Kirk had finished it before we left. Maybe I would get my boyfriend back.

Then, because I didn’t want to think anymore about all the doubts that had risen up during these past weeks, I turned the marriage question over to Kayla. “What about you? Do you think you’ll ever get married?”

“Me?” she said, picking up our cigarette butts from the stoop. “I don’t know. I don’t think marriage is for me.”

I couldn’t help but wonder, as I studied that dark landscape before us, if marriage was for me either.

I awoke to the sound of a shrieking baby. I was slightly horrified, as I had dreamed that Kirk and I were married and had moved into the basement of the Stevens family house. For a moment, in my bleary early-morning state, I thought that was our child crying as if its little life depended on it. I was heartily relieved to realize that this little life wasn’t dependent on me. It had to be Kirk’s niece, I thought, remembering how Mrs. Stevens had mentioned that Kate and Kenneth would be bringing the baby over early so we could all go to the church together for the christening, which was at one-thirty.

I peeked into Kirk’s bedroom and discovered that he was up already, the blue plaid bedspread already laid neatly back in place. I decided I needed time to wake up before I faced the Stevens clan in full force, so I grabbed my toiletry bag from my room, as well as a couple of towels, and hit the shower.

The crying had mercifully abated by the time I got out of the bathroom. Once I’d dried my hair, dusted my face with makeup and dressed in a T-shirt and capris, I headed downstairs, where I found Mrs. Stevens, in yet another Lands’ End sweat suit, sprawled on the floor with a dark-haired baby girl, playing peekaboo. Mr. Stevens read a newspaper in the wingback while Kirk and Kayla sat on the sofas talking with a tall, slender woman with sparkling blue eyes who I assumed was Kate, and an equally tall and somewhat rugged-looking bearded guy who must have been Kenneth.

“You’re up!” Mrs. Stevens said, glancing away from her granddaughter. “We were worried you were going to sleep all day, Angela!”

The thought wasn’t unappealing.

Kirk introduced me to Kate and Kenneth as I took a seat beside him on the sofa. Kayla got up to get me a cup of coffee— I guess she could tell without even asking that I wasn’t interested in whatever tepid brew sat in that china teapot on the table— to go with the rolls and Danishes that were laid out on the table.

As I munched contentedly on my brunch—relieved that I could at least eat this meal without fear of food poisoning, I realized the arrival of Kirk’s niece was a fortuitous event, as it meant all attention was now drawn away from me and focused on little Kimberly, who sat center stage on the carpet before us, babbling incoherently, much to the delight of her doting grandmother. I found Kate and Kenneth easy enough to talk to, mostly because we could barely exchange four sentences before Mrs. Stevens shrieked, “Look at Kimberly, look, look!” and we all turned to watch Kimberly clap her hands or blow a spit bubble through her tiny bow-shaped lips.

But the enchanting little Kimberly show ended abruptly when Mr. Stevens looked at his watch and shouted accusingly at his wife, “Carol, it’s almost noon! Don’t we have to be at the church by one-fifteen? ”We’re going to be late!“

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Stevens said, looking up from where she was still sprawled on the floor with her granddaughter. “We need to dress Kimberly! ”Then, looking down at her nylon sweat suit, she cried, “We all have to to get dressed!”

Chaos ensued as Mrs. Stevens grabbed Kimberly off the floor, shouting, “Where’s the baptismal gown?”, sending Kenneth running for the car and Kate running for the diaper bag. Mr. Stevens eased himself up from the chair and lumbered out of the room, and Kayla continued to munch contentedly on a Danish. “The church is only five freakin‘ minutes away,” she muttered, reaching for her coffee mug. Kirk stood up. “Yeah, but we better get ready. You know how she gets,” he said, referring, I was sure, to his mother. “You coming?” he said, turning to me.

Once alone in my room, I pulled my baby-blue dress out of the suitcase with something like the anticipation I had once felt on Christmas morning. I couldn’t wait to wear it. Had been dreaming of it ever since I had dragged it home from Bloomingdale’s.

Thank God it had a little Lycra, I thought, watching the wrinkles smooth out as I pulled it on and zipped up the side.

Perfect, I thought, noting how the spaghetti straps showed off my toned arms and the top fit just tight enough across my small chest to make it seem more pronounced than usual. I sighed. There was a reason this dress cost $150.

After smoothing a little pomade over my hair to take out the layer of frizz that had already developed and slipping on my strappy heels, I knocked on Kirk’s bedroom door.

“Hey,” I said, poking my head in. He was standing in his navy-blue suit trousers, his white shirt still unbuttoned and hanging loose while he ran a clothing steamer over his suit jacket.

“Hey,” he said, putting the steamer back on its stand and turning to look at me. “Wow,” he said, “you look…hot.”

I couldn’t tell whether this was a good thing or not, judging by the somewhat frightened expression on his face.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” I said, stepping close to him and sliding my arms around his waist beneath his shirt.

He immediately pulled away, “Angie, stop! My parents are right downstairs.”

“You mean all the way downstairs,” I said teasingly, pulling him close again. Feeling a bit mischievous, I pressed my lips to one bare nipple.

“Ange—” he practically groaned, his body tensing beneath my hands.

“Okay, okay,” I said, letting go of him and going to sit on the bed. Sheesh. You’d think his parents had put a ban on sex, the way he was acting. Then I remembered those separate bedrooms of theirs, and the way I’d seen Mrs. Stevens shrug off her husband’s hand when he’d offered to help her off the floor, and wondered if maybe they had put a ban on any sort of intimacy.

But this thought flew out of my mind as I waited for Kirk to finish dressing, my eyes roaming over his bedroom, taking it all in for the first time since I’d arrived. Like Kate’s, it looked like a shrine to the younger Kirk, with football trophies lining one shelf and beer steins collected from the various pubs Kirk had frequented during his college years at Boston University. I even spotted a couple of model cars. It was cute to see all these artifacts from Kirk’s early days, I thought, standing up to study a photo collage that hung on one wall.

A photo collage containing six different photos, all of them of Kirk and Susan.

“What the hell?” I said out loud.

“What’s wrong?” Kirk said, turning to me as he adjusted his tie around his neck.

“What’s with all these pictures of Susan everywhere? You weren’t even living here when you dated her! And that family portrait? What the hell is that about?”

“That’s my mother. She put all those pictures up. I think she was trying to make Susan…feel at home while she was here. Don’t make such a big deal out of it. Those pictures are old, Noodles. She probably just didn’t get around to changing them.”

I wasn’t convinced. And I was even less convinced that I would ever find pictures of myself in that stately old house when I entered the living room with Kirk and his mother’s eyes widened at the sight of me.

“Oh, dear, Angela, is that what you’re wearing?”

I glanced at Kirk, who suddenly turned to look at me as if seeking out the fault in my outfit.

“I mean, it’s a lovely dress, but to church? Your arms are all bare! And your shoulders are showing,” she said, looking at me as if I were exposing my nipples, too.

As I took in her floral, flowing half-sleeved dress, which was buttoned rather primly to the neck, I suddenly felt like one of the strippers at Jimmy’s Topless—not that I’d ever even been there or anything.

“What’s wrong?” Kate said, entering the room in an ivory skirt and matching blazer that screamed Mother of the Blessed Child. Her husband followed in a navy suit, holding Kimberly, who was swathed in what seemed like miles and miles of flowing white silk.

Even Kayla the exhibitionist had opted for a tasteful tan pantsuit.

“She looks fine, Mom,” Kirk said.

“Yeah, the church isn’t really that strict anymore,” Kate said.

“Well, I am,” Mrs. Stevens continued, going to the closet in the front foyer and returning with what looked like a giant lace doily. “Here,put this on,” she said, draping the shawl around my scandalous shoulders and covering my hundred-fifty-dollar

dress with a piece of material that probably went for ninety-nine cents a yard. Worse, it smelled an awful lot like mothballs. I sneezed two times in succession.

“See that? You’re getting a cold, Angela. Better you stay warm,” Mrs. Stevens said.

Kirk sighed, glancing at me apologetically, then turned to his mom once more and asked, “Where’s Dad?”

“In the car,” she replied, grabbing her pocketbook from the table. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

We arrived at the church a full half hour early, which was fine with Mrs. Stevens, as she wanted to take pictures outside the church. Guess who held the camera? And when it came time for the ceremony, the Nikon was taken out of my hands and I was given a digital camcorder by Kenneth, who looked hopefully at me and asked if I would kindly film the baptism. I didn’t mind, really, as my new role as videographer earned me a spot I otherwise might not have gotten, right next to Kirk, who stood beside the rest of his family at the baptismal font when we got to that part of the ceremony. Besides, I felt comfortable gazing at the Stevens family on the little screen. It somewhat set me apart from them, and I realized suddenly that was exactly where I wanted to be. Miles and miles away.

Which was why I was surprised at how oddly affected I was once the priest began to utter the sacred words that would initiate little Kimberly into the Roman Catholic faith. In spite of all my muttered prayers on the airplane, I had not really come to terms with the religion I had been brought up in. Hadn’t really even thought about it since college, when I’d studied Wallace Stevens’s poetry and decided Christianity was all a farce. But that was just me testing out my intellectual wings, I realized now, as I watched with something close to reverence while the baptismal water was poured. I realized, too, all the decisions that went into this child-rearing business. It was a huge responsibility, bringing a life into this world, choosing everything from what she would eat, what she would wear, to what kind of prayers she would mutter on an airplane half out of her mind on the way to meet her future in-laws. I wondered, not for the first time, if I was ready for it. If I would ever be ready for it.

Kirk certainly seemed to be, I thought, as Kate handed him Kimberly to hold once we got back to our seats and he smiled down at the wriggling child with what looked like pure joy in his eyes. Then he gazed up at me, and I saw a look in his eyes that said he hoped I was ready, too.

Oh, my.

Ready or not, I was soon back at Kirk’s house, surrounded by a handful of relatives who, I learned, had been lurking among us in the pews and whom I was introduced to as Kirk’s girlfriend—and once as his fiancee by Kate, who realized her mistake when I flushed red to the roots of my hair. I cannot explain my reaction to this little slip of the tongue any more than I can explain the reasons I clung to Kirk’s side, hoping against hope that somehow it was possible, despite the way his mother had been eyeing me suspiciously ever since I’d ditched that lace doily into the hall closet.

The rest of the evening whirled by in a blur—buffet meal, followed by cake, which I rushed around serving people, probably in some vain hope of earning Mrs. Stevens’s respect by being her personal slave. I even attempted to scrub a few pots back in the kitchen, until Mrs. Stevens came in and practically scolded me for not being around to say goodbye to her great-aunt Bertha, who had left early because her rheumatism was acting up.

I wished I could be so lucky.

Then came the opening of the gifts. There weren’t many— mostly cards I assumed were stuffed with money, a few dresses, a children’s Bible and a plastic Noah’s ark, complete with sets of little animals. I didn’t even have to bring up the choking hazard, because Mrs. Stevens seemed to swoop away each gift before Kimberly could get her gooey little hands on it. As it turned out, Kayla had bought her goddaughter a cross, which surprised me, since she didn’t seem like the traditional type. But when I saw the way she beamed beneath her mother’s satisfied smile, I realized I wasn’t the only one seeking approval by this family.

My gift turned out to be the largest box of all of them. I stood there practically trembling with anticipation as they allowed little Kimberly the inaugural tear of the wrap, before her mother helped by pulling away the rest.