Final Vinyl Days (3 page)

“No lie.”

“No lie.” She squeezed his hand tightly and moved closer, their foreheads almost touching.

“Sounds a little kinky.”

“No shit, Jack.” Clearly she was not entirely sober, and he caught himself hoping that the glassy-eyed haze would never wear off, that they could just step out into the bright June day and walk off into a perfect world. “You know, I meant Donna Reed as she was on TV, of course, with the Jell-O and meatloaf, you know. Donna in real life was really cool, protested Vietnam, thought women were capable of a hell of a lot more than that show made it look like, you know? Donna was okay.”

There was a lot of activity outside, and they stood and looked out the window just in time to see the groom lifted and hurled into the pool, a herd of children in bright suits and water wings scattering so as not to be hit by the big drunk man and all of his tuxedo-clad groomsmen and two
bridesmaids who followed. Eve said that the local rental place was used to this. She had been surprised when attending weddings in Atlanta that every groom didn't
always
get thrown in the pool. It was a ritual around here, had been forever.

“Are we being antisocial?” Eve asked as the groom stood by the pool wringing out his coat. He pulled wet money from his pocket and fanned it in the air. It seemed most of the people had gone outside to watch. The singer had packed up his keyboard and was getting some food from the sparse table. They had missed the cutting of the cake, and now the little plastic bride and groom along with two doves and a big silver heart perched on the upper tier reigning over a messy, half-eaten cake.

“Oh,” he said and let his other arm drop around her waist, the light pink fabric cool and slick. “Are there other people here?”

It took forever for the bride and groom to come out for the big farewell. Many people had already left the reception. Supposedly, all the bridesmaids were going to help the bride get dressed, but Eve said that she thought they could do without her. The result was lots of people whispering “Where is Eve? Where is Eve?” so that someone else could say “Oh, of course, with Adam.”

By now the biblical humor had been reduced to a lot
of snake jokes. The mothers and grandmothers and aunts were tired and flat, eyes dulled by the champagne they had pretended not to drink. Missy's parents wept openly as she turned and whirled her bouquet, which was caught by a middle-aged man in a bright yellow suit. Adam confessed this was unfamiliar to him, these men in fluorescent colors, that they should be required by law to pass out sunglasses.

Everyone cheered when the car drove away, and women pretended not to see where someone had written
get some
in shaving cream.

One of the grandmothers pointed out to all the guests the delightful message “Come again and again.” Adam and Eve both said good-byes to the remaining people they knew, both complimented Missy's parents on the lovely wedding. And then they were left there, in the parking lot of the country club with the heat weighing down oppressively. Eve was swinging her shoes by her side, her other hand still clinging to his. “Well,” he finally said and looked off into the pine trees surrounding the tennis courts. “Would you like to go get something to drink? Eat?”

On the ride to the Ramada Inn he regretfully had to let go of her hand to shift gears. She talked in great bursts of speed, much information delivered, such as that she
would have to go back and get her car, her parents were expecting her for dinner, her feet were killing her, and then she fell silent. He was worrying about what to say next, what to do. It seemed that the force that had brought them together was dwindling and he didn't want that to happen. He pulled into a parking space, killed the engine, reached over, and took her hand.

The rest of the afternoon passed slowly in the cooled, darkened room, in the light of the muted television as the weather channel continued its ceaseless forecast—Washington, Atlanta, Kalamazoo. Her dress was crumpled in the corner, like some ghost of the Victorian era that had pulled up a chair to watch. Her unlikely underclothes, strapless bra and briefs in red-and-green striped cotton, were looped over the lamp that was bolted to the bedside table. He lay there watching her, trying to decide where to go from here. What did this mean? Were their lives irrevocably altered, or would they say good-bye and pretend it never happened? A long-distance relationship was the last thing he needed, that and an angry, hulking boyfriend, now standing seven feet tall with multiple tattoos and an arsenal. He had no desire to go through what he had just witnessed, this ceremony that might lead him right into his parents' life, the ultimate sacrifice, thirty miserable years thrown down the sewer for the sake of
the child's
well-being. But then again what
was
he waiting for? His own history offered none of the porch-sleeping comfort she had described.

The last thing Eve had said before dozing off was that he shouldn't let her sleep past four-thirty and already it was a quarter till five. He shook her gently and was greeted warmly, as if some part of her had not expected to see him there, and then she was in high gear, clothes retrieved and adjusted, fresh lipstick and mouthwash. He drove her to her car at the country club and, without meaning to, asked if he could see her again. Without breaking his stride or giving her opportunity to respond, he continued “and
if
I could see you, then
when
?” How much longer did she plan to live with this guy who obviously meant nothing to her?

During the next two months they met six times, once in Atlanta (the only trace of his predecessor being a book about transcendental meditation, a makeshift bong, and one really ugly polyester blend shirt, which enabled him to replace his Mr. Wonderful image with one that made him question her taste), once in Washington, and four times in a Days Inn in Greensboro, North Carolina. They talked on the phone every other day. Adam was starting to feel an obligation. Once he even thought the
words
future
and
commitment
. He could foresee all the problems on the horizon:
where
would they choose to live? Would she even consider leaving the job that was going so well for her? God, would she have to have three children, just as there had been in her own family?

“You know this is never going to work,” he said, his hand slowly pointing from her chest to his own to make sure he was understood. She was in his sparse apartment, her hair still dripping from his shower, which she had quietly mentioned was a haven for fungus; she was wearing the flip-flops he kept just outside of the bathroom door.

“Why?” She absentmindedly picked up the magazine she had brought with her. A woman in a tweed blazer looked up provocatively from the slick page. She angled herself, terry cloth robe tied loosely. “You mean us?” She said the word
us
as if it had been there forever,
us
like life, truth, God, eternity. He nodded slowly, and she nervously picked the magazine back up, riffled the pages sending the heady floral fragrance advertised there into the room. “Why?”

“I'm not sure.” He went over to his CD collection and began flipping through cases. “I'm just not sure.” What he was thinking was it's now or never. Either we're going to call it off, or we're going to make a decision. He was thinking that tradition says
she
should be the one initiating
all of this and yet there she sat, calmly asking all of the questions.

“Is it the North/South thing? I mean I never said I have to always live in Atlanta.” She waited, forehead furrowed while he shook his head. He had given up on the argument that DC was not “the North” and in fact was considered by many to be in “the South.”

“Well, is it the Jew/Gentile thing? Because I really feel that I could go either way.” She paused, mouth twisted in thought. “I mean I wouldn't exactly
broadcast
it at home.”

“No. That's not it.” Now he was thoroughly confused. He had no good reason. All of the likely ones were there, but they simply weren't good enough. They weren't good enough to overlook that rare match that might never happen again. How many awful weddings would he have to attend just to even come close to such a meeting? Still, he felt like a fool, confused and speechless.

“It's the Adam and Eve thing,” he finally said later that night when she was almost asleep. “It drives me absolutely nuts.”

“You're not serious?” She fumbled to turn on a light and then turned to face him. She was propped up there on her elbow without a stitch on, her thick hair fanned out around her face. “I was going by Evelyn, remember?
You
were the one who started calling me Eve.
Little Eve Lyn
Wallace. Little Eve Lyn Wallace
. You said it so often you sounded like a mynah bird.” Her eyes watered, but she fought the impulse with a deliberate laugh and a forced shake of the head. He waited for her to deliver her biggest piece of ammunition, the fact that she had let him talk her right out of her old life and romance and right into his. He could hear it coming, the blame and insult, the imposed guilt and obligation. And then he knew. He knew that what he really wanted was for her to tempt him, seduce him, beg him to marry her.

“You are serious.” She sat up and pulled her worn-out robe from the floor. She had announced proudly on her first visit that fashion should never forsake comfort. Now she was lost in the loose folds of terry cloth, the belt pulled tightly around her waist, and he found himself thinking about how she had said that as a child she had to sleep with her hand over her navel for fear that the bogeyman would come and touch her there. He realized then that he had already wrapped the blanket around his body like a cocoon. This was not a conversation to have naked. “What if we were Mary and Joseph?”

“They had better results.”

“I have no intention of being the person you want to step in and ruin your life, be an excuse for you to be screwed up and feel sorry for yourself.” Her speech gave
way to the slow twang he adored. “I know that's what you're looking for, and that's not why I'm here.”

Now he felt entirely stupid. He felt so incredibly stupid that he tried to turn it all around into a joke. She pulled out that big piece of hard Samsonite luggage that her parents proudly surprised her with (it was a story she often told when she had had too much to drink and was feeling homesick) when she moved to Atlanta, and he felt desperate. He begged her never to leave him. He said they should get married then, that weekend. He suggested they pull out the atlas and look up all of the Edens they could find—Arizona, Maryland, North Carolina, Texas, Wyoming. They could get married in Eden, North Carolina, or Eden, Maryland; maybe they would live there forever. Maybe they would go to Eden, Australia, on a honeymoon, or maybe that was a trip for later, maybe that was for the silver anniversary. He hadn't meant anything that he'd said; it had been anxiety talking.

She thought it was all hilarious for a while. She laughed and kissed him, said that he was sweetly weird. She said that there was no reason to rush into anything, that given all that he had been thinking, she felt it best to wait at least a few months and then talk it over again. This made him feel the need all the more; he said he wanted a standard wedding, everything and anything she wanted.
She said that she first needed to find an equivalent job; they needed to find an apartment with a clean bathroom.

When they finally got married, it was in that same country club on a June day just about as hot. The bridesmaids wore lavendar and there was a champagne fountain, but no one passed out and Adam did not get thrown into the pool. Gretchel Suzanne Brown did give out quite a few business cards, and there were many, many biblical jokes and great philosophical musings such as whether or not Adam and Eve had navels. Adam's fraternity brothers were threatening to strip him naked so as to answer this question as well as count his ribs, and he was praying to the God he wasn't sure existed that this wouldn't happen. If it did, people would see he'd been trapped, held down, shaved. He had not even told Eve. He was also praying her body would not be covered in blue ink when they returned to the Ramada Inn to spend their first night.

And one year, six Chippendale dining-room chairs, and one neurotic AKC-registered Irish setter later, while in labor with their first child, Eve made it altogether clear that she preferred to be called Evelyn whether he liked it or not, that she was sick and
goddamned
(she gritted her teeth for emphasis) tired of the jokes, tired of him telling
people that they met on the sixth day. It had been his way out, this ridiculous connection, as if by fate he had been forced to marry her. He was always the innocent one. Always the abused one, the neglected, the ruined man. She told him to put blame where he should, on his toilet training, his parents, his obsession with names, and to tell somebody who gave a damn, like a psychiatrist. She was seized by another labor pain and proceeded to say every word she had ever read on bathroom walls, the slow accent exaggerating the harshness of every single syllable.

“What about Cain if it's a boy?” Adam asked, trying to entertain the young nurse who after many bloody attempts finally got an IV in Eve's vein. Eve had pointed to the helpless young woman's head and screamed
Yoo Hoo! Stoooopid. Anybody home
?

“Cain,” he said again. “Now, there's a good strong name from the Bible that you don't hear too often.”

“You don't hear Judas too much,” the nurse whispered and stifled a laugh. Thank God, Eve had her bare back to them at the moment and missed that exchange; she was saying “shit” through clenched teeth over and over in the rhythm of “Jingle Bells.”

“Judas, I like that,” he whispered and then went back to his normal voice. “But Cain …”

“If I'm alive,” Eve screamed in anger. “If I'm
able
, I'll name this little son of a bitch anything I please.”