Jeremy Thrane (24 page)

“Last verse,” Sebastian called out, then came the major chords, then the verse, which went “Now that we’re old, and ready to go, We get to thinking what happened a long time ago. We had a lot of kids, trouble and pain, But, Oh Lord, we’d do it again.”

His voice broke on the last word and he stopped for a moment or
two, as if he were trying to collect himself. He cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he said. “That line always gets me.”

Then he strummed the minor chord that heralded the chorus and sang, his voice a little wispy with emotion, “Oh, kisses sweeter than wine, Oh, kisses sweeter than wine.” He decrescendoed on the last word the way songs ended on albums, as if this were a recording and there was a sound guy in a booth, twiddling the knobs and making it trail off.

Then he came back to the phone and said, “Jeremy.”

“What.”

“I’m so glad you’re still there.” There was a silence; I could hear him breathing through his mouth into the receiver. “I won’t ask whether you understood; it’s enough that you listened and that you heard it. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. The temptation to giggle was as strong as an oncoming sneeze. Somehow, I suppressed it.

“Of course I read your work for my own pleasure,” he said. “I can’t help responding to it viscerally, because of how I feel about you. You can think that’s pathetic and unhealthy, or you can be flattered and amused. It’s entirely up to you, of course.”

“Can we please just not talk about this anymore? If you’ll send me a check for what you owe me, we’ll call it even.”

“What?” he said, stricken. “You’re not going to write for me any more?”

“Maybe not. It might be better if I don’t.”

“Well, if there’s anything I can say to change your mind, please tell me. In the meantime, of course, I’ll send you a check.”

There was another silence, this one a lot longer.

“All right,” he said. “I have to spell it out, just so I’ll know there was no misunderstanding. When we’re old men, after years and decades together, after trouble and pain, I want us to be able to say, Oh Lord, we’d do it again. I know you don’t love me now, but then, you’re still getting over Ted. But some day?”

“I doubt it. I’m not really the marrying kind.”

“You were married to Ted.”

“That wasn’t marriage,” I said bleakly. “I’ve got to go, I have to be somewhere.”

“All that matters,” said Sebastian, “is growing old with someone. It doesn’t really matter whether or not they’re the perfect mate for you at the beginning, because there’s really no such thing. I think that comes with time. What matters is those years together.”

“I disagree,” I said. “Staying with someone out of some misguided sense of loyalty strikes me as a tragic mistake. We only get one life. I do anyway, I don’t know about you.”

“You’ve forgiven Ted for breaking it off with you, then?”

“All I’m saying is that I would rather be alone than settle for someone.”

“Well, I’d like to take back my participation in that toast you made. I hereby reverse the wineglass, unclink it from yours. Bachelorhood is not blissful. To wedded bliss, Jeremy, or united bliss. We are a mating, pairing-off, two-by-two kind of animal, and I’ve chosen you.”

“That may be,” I said hollowly. “I haven’t chosen you though. That seems like something of a stumbling block.”

“All I ask is that you think about what I’ve said.”

“Well, all right, but I don’t know what good it’ll do. I have to go.”

I hung up. Out the window, water towers stood against the sky, solitary and shaggy and comical and sad. I pocketed my keys, picked up my package, and went out into the blistering air and made my shoulder-hunched way to the post office. I stood in the long line, which advanced slowly, giving me plenty of time to change my mind. But when at long last I reached the window, I dutifully mailed my ambitious progeny first class to Hope Gladwell of the Piers Blandon Literary Agency, chosen from the yellow pages solely on the strength of the resonance and charm of those names. I had called Hope’s assistant yesterday morning and received permission to send it, and so there was nothing now to stop me from doing so. That was, I gathered, how these things were done.

At four o’clock I walked into the Old Town Bar. Amanda was already there, sitting in a booth facing the door, looking into a small mirror with a disgusted expression on her face. I took off my coat and sat across from her.

“Hi,” she said tonelessly without looking away from her reflection.

“What’s wrong?”

“Every time we go on tour, I come back with a pizza face,” she said.
“I fucking hate it. It’s no mystery—we eat greasy food, don’t sleep enough, smoke and drink too much, and breathe exhaust on the interstates. I’ve lost weight, though, don’t ask me how, so Liam doesn’t care if I’m covered with pustules. As long as I’m thin.” She put her mirror away.

I took the menu I was handed and glanced up at the waitress. “What are you drinking, Amanda?”

She sniffed. “I’ll have a glass of water and a cup of coffee.”

“Make that two of each,” I said. I scanned my sister’s face; her skin looked fine to me, if a bit pale. “Are you going to Mom’s later for dinner?”

“Quit looking at me like that,” she said. “You’re making me feel even uglier. You’re going to Mom’s tonight? She didn’t invite me.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.” She sniffed again. “She told me Leonard’s getting worse. She said he’d gone out shopping and forgot where he lived. A neighbor brought him home.”

“Oh, poor Mom.”

We were silent for a while. Our coffee and water arrived.

“I’ll have a vegetable plate,” Amanda told the waitress.

“I’ll have a bacon cheeseburger and fries,” I said. “Mom’s going to serve some healthy low-cal low-fat thing,” I told Amanda. “I need sustenance.”

“Listen,” Amanda said when the waitress had gone. “I have something to tell you. You have to promise not to tell Mom tonight, I want to tell her myself, in person, next time I see her.”

“Why don’t you come have dinner up there with me?”

She cut her eyes at me. “I don’t want to, actually. Things have been sort of weird between Mom and me since I got back from tour. I don’t really know why, there’s just this tension between us. I feel like she’s mad at me.”

“For what?”

She lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and examined the burning end, stalling. “Well,” she said, exhaling smoke, “maybe it’s because I called her one night from the road, I think we were in Cincinnati. I was probably drunk, I don’t remember, and I was exhausted. I was so mad at her
though. I started thinking about how she raised us. Being on the road brings it all back. We had such a fucked-up childhood. Anyway, I think I came at her sort of hard, and it was totally out of the blue. She didn’t know how to respond. She was crying. She said right before we hung up that she wished she could go back and do it all differently but she can’t, so maybe we can try to work things out as adults. Which I thought sounded good, but she’s been so distant since I got back.”

“You know how she is,” I said. “She hates confrontation. It freaks her out. And it must have been really hard to hear that, especially since there’s nothing she can do about it now.”

“Well, yeah.” She took another lungful of smoke and blew it out in a rush. “Okay, you’re probably right, but that’s not what I wanted to talk about.”

I waited; she didn’t say anything. She seemed increasingly brittle and nervous the longer we sat here; I had the feeling that if I probed too hard, she might shatter. Her face looked tense; her eyes were skittery and unfocused. When she looked like this, it meant she was on the defensive about something, but I couldn’t imagine what it could be.

“Are you mad at me for something I did when we were little?” I asked with wary provocation after a moment.

She laughed a little too hard. “No,” she said. She hesitated, then blurted out defiantly, without meeting my eyes, “Liam and I are getting married.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, that is news.”

She leaned back, trying and failing to seem calm and sure of herself, shooting a look at me to gauge my reaction.

I took a sip of coffee and wiped my mouth on my napkin.

“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?” she asked with pleading indignation.

“Congratulations,” I said. “It just took a minute to sink in.”

“I’m not pregnant,” she said. “If that’s what you’re thinking. And it was officially romantic. He went down on bended knee the night I got back. He told me I was the love of his life and gave me this.” She extended her left hand so I could see that there was indeed a gold-looking band bearing a tiny but inarguably authentic diamond on the appropriate finger. “The words ‘green card’ didn’t come up once. We love each
other, Jeremy. I know you don’t believe me because we treat each other like shit most of the time, but it’s true, we do.”

“And you said yes.”

“I cried.”

“What did he do while you were away on tour?”

“He got a job,” she said proudly. “He’s tending bar at this new place that just opened in Williamsburg, right near where we live. This ring is all paid for; he saved his tips.”

“So why haven’t you told Mom yet?” I asked.

“Because,” she said. “I thought if I told you first, then you could be prepared to stick up for me when she asks you what you think.”

“What makes you think she’s going to ask me what I think?”

“Because you’re like her little oracle. She splits your head open and reads your brains like chicken entrails whenever anything happens.”

“Chicken entrails,” I repeated, laughing. “She does not.”

Her eyes glinted. “Come on, Jeremy, she does too. She always has. Whenever I cough or sneeze, she has to find out how you feel about it.”

“You’re just being paranoid, Amanda.” This was my older-brother trump card; I had always, from the time we were little, been able to make my sisters question their versions of reality by asserting my own. The indisputable authority of having been around longer was one of the perks of being the oldest. “You always think everyone’s talking about you.”

“Well, maybe I just wish you were,” she said. “Then I’d feel like you gave a shit.”

“Of course I give a shit,” I said. “Listen, Amanda, I have to ask this, as your older brother, it’s sort of in my job description and I’m asking precisely because I do give a shit. I just wonder, are you completely sure about this? It wasn’t just the heat of the moment, the joyful reunion and all?”

“See,” she said disgustedly, “this is exactly the reaction I was dreading. God! You act like I’m fourteen! Like I can’t think for myself!”

“First you say you wish I gave a shit, and then you get pissed off when I do. If that’s not fourteen-year-old behavior, I don’t know what is.”

“I just, I don’t know. I want you to get what I’m about, is that so
hard to understand? I wish you got why I’m doing this without my having to explain it. You have this idea about Liam that isn’t true, he’s not what you think he is or why would I still be with him? Why can’t you give me the benefit of the doubt? You think I’m that pathetic?”

“Why does it matter so much what I think?”

She stared at me, dry-eyed and seething, chewing on her lower lip; I looked back at her impassively, my heart pounding. We had just reached our classic stalemate, the end of a familiar, worn-out conversation. We had to retreat from the edge at this point, or we’d fall into a bubbling lava pit. For a split second I thought we might actually be about to go for it, but our food arrived, and we immediately turned our attention to our plates, half glad for the distraction.

“So will you walk me down the aisle?” she said suddenly through a mouthful of carrot.

“Give you away?” I said. I was suddenly all choked up for some reason. “With pleasure,” I said with an attempt at a light, teasing laugh. “It’ll be a relief to finally get rid of you. When’s the wedding?”

“June, probably,” she said. “We don’t know where yet.”

“Look, Amanda,” I said through the lump in my throat, “you have to call Mom and tell her. I can’t necessarily be trusted to keep this a secret. Call her before tonight.”

“No, you tell her. Go ahead. I’d rather you did it.”

I couldn’t suppress my pleasure at her trusting me to be the go-between. “You should tell her,” I insisted. “She’s your mother.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said. “But, man, I’ve been dreading her reaction. I hate it when she gets all cheerful and brave and openly accepting when you know inside she’s just freaking. I wish she’d just come right out and disapprove sometimes. It would be such a fucking relief.”

I had some time to kill before I was due uptown at my mother’s, but didn’t feel much like seeing Scott when he bounded in from his wonderful day, so I decided to walk around for a while to help digest my lunch. The streets were refreshingly frenetic. Traffic honked and roared and squealed, I was jostled and elbowed as I dodged oncoming people and wove my way past slower pedestrians, sped along empty stretches, bottlenecked in crowds, bobbed through stalled traffic. I threaded my way through Union Square, over and down to the East Village, up Broadway to Union Square again, and up Park Avenue South. This herky-jerky wandering lulled my mind into a meditative calm.

I was somewhat surprised when I found myself in Gramercy Park outside Ted’s house, staring up at the fourth-story windows that had once been mine. They were dark except for glinting reflections from the streetlamp below. Chelsea was just across the island from Gramercy, but my new neighborhood felt far, far removed from here, years and miles away instead of blocks and months. This was the first time I’d come back since I’d left. I was amazed to see the house again; it looked as if I’d never lived here. There was the heavy door, there were the mullioned windows, there was Dina Sandusky’s boring husband Cory on the couch in the house next door.

It was Thursday, the night Basia went to Astoria, where her fifty-year-old portly Greek gentleman friend wined and dined her and (I surmised, but of course didn’t know for sure, because she never would have told me) took her to bed in the house where he still lived with his ancient mother, and afterward paid for her homeward taxi. It was also the
night Yoshi went God knew where, probably to some yoga center to pose ostentatiously in drawstring pants and a muscle shirt.