The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay (28 page)

In Las Vegas, that night with Ben, I was self-conscious to be naked. I was not an apple, busy being an apple. I was a
woman,
and I knew I was being seen. I had a flatter tummy then, and he put his hand on it, and I sucked it in. He ran his fingers up the side of my torso, and I held my breath. He set his lips to the spot where breast met body and I tried to puff myself up, to move my flesh around into just the right organization by sheer force of will. Would I feel that way now, ten years wiser, if I were in his bed again?

“You're blushing,” says Simone. “It's annoying.”

I startle and color even more deeply. “No I'm not.”

“Look at your cleavage.”

I don't have much cleavage, but I look down to the place where it would be if I did. I'm a speckled red hen down there. “Yikes.”

“I hope it's because you can feel my critical gaze.”

“Thanks, but no.” I tip my head back, embarrassed by my train of thoughts, but also unnerved.

“Were you thinking about him?” she asks, setting down her pencil.

I pinch my lips together. “I guess I was.”

She sighs deeply.

“I'm sorry, Simone.”

“Apologize to your so-called boyfriend back in Chicago. Home-wrecker.”

“Technically in this scenario Ben would be the home-wrecker. But no homes are currently being wrecked. I have nothing to apologize for, or at least nothing much. I know you don't believe me, Simone, but this is what it means to be a woman. Life gets confusing, and you keep trying to do the right thing.”

“Since when is the right thing stealing the love of my life?”

I am about to attempt, yet again, to squelch this notion when I hear the studio door opening.

Simone and I both freeze, and my heart stops a bit. I am sitting on a stool topless and my smock is too far to reach. She could reach it easily, throw it to me, but instead she turns to the door. “Shield your eyes!” she shouts toward the incomer, as though my naked chest is the mammary equivalent of Medusa's face.

“Shield my eyes?” asks Jenny. I exhale dramatically and unwind my arms, which seem to have wrapped themselves around my front on their own. “Oh! Life painting 101 going on in here?”

“Jenny. It's you. Thank God,” I say instead of answering. “I thought based on the way things seem to go around here that you would be Ben.”

“Thought, or hoped?” she asks. “Nice rack.”

“Thanks,” I say, crawling off the stool and pulling on my bra. “Simone needs to work on life painting for her art school portfolio.”

“Art school?” Jenny looks thrilled at this. And surprised.

Simone nods. “Lily thinks I shouldn't imagine people naked without their permission.”

Jenny laughs. “While I think that's a good goal, it may not be entirely achievable.”

I nod ruefully, thinking of Ben again. Then I laugh to myself. “When the door opened, I was sure you were going to be a Hutchinson. There are so many of them in this town. I was certain I was about to be standing naked in front of Ben.”

Jenny snorts. “This isn't a romantic comedy. How come you always have so much paint in your hair?” she asks as I pull the button-down smock back over my camisole.

“How come you're always so dressed up?” I volley back. She is wearing a beautiful pair of leather jeans with a soft thin cashmere tunic over the top.

“Did you forget? Carla's surprise party? We've got to go straight over there or we're going to miss the shouting and jumping part.”

“What surprise party?” I ask, flummoxed.

“The one I told you about yesterday,” says Simone.

“Simone! I didn't even see you yesterday.”

She shrugs. “Surprise.”

Jenny shoots her a warning look, but I can see she's not genuinely mad. “Well, too late to do anything now. If we don't get over there, quicklike, we're going to be the jerks that meet her on the way in and spoil everything. Hustle up.”

I grab our jackets while Jenny stifles the fire and Simone quickly stashes the paints. Together we race across the street, the lapels of our coats flapping as we scurry through the icy winds. I look a mess, I'm sure, but it doesn't seem that important considering I don't even know the person whose birthday I will be jumping and shouting about.

“Who is Carla, again?” I ask just as we're about to open the doors of the brew pub.

Jenny laughs but doesn't answer me. “Simone, you're pretty cruel, you know that?”

“What?” I ask. “Wait, who is this? What's going on?”

“I figured if Ben sees her looking like an escapee from the mental institution,” Simone replies, gesturing to my wild paint-streaked hair and half-buttoned smock, “he'll realize there are other fish in the sea. Younger, cooler fish.”

Jenny shakes her head indulgently. “It's not going to work, my young, cool friend,” she tells her. “He's been bitten by the love bug.”

“Wait. Stop, both of you!” I finally shout, and both of them freeze, startled. “He hasn't been bitten by anything except maybe the bug up his butt,” I say first to Jenny. Then to Simone, “Now, whose surprise party is this that I'm walking into?”

At last Jenny and Simone do stop and turn to me, hands on doors. A wicked smile crosses Simone's face. “Well, Carla Hutchinson, of course.”

I look to Jenny, desperate. “Not…”

She nods just a bit ruefully. “Ben's mother. Hope you're ready to meet the fam!”

 

Seventeen

 

I am not, to put it mildly, ready to meet the fam. All my crowing about having no self-consciousness in service of art flies right out the window when the heavy leather door opens and I am faced with a sea of people, most of whom I've never met, who fall silent the second I walk through the door.

And I mean
silent.
I mean, all heads swivel toward me. My mouth goes dry and I reach up to touch my hair. How bad is it? I should have at least looked in a mirror. But then some kind of recognition starts to creep over the faces of the partygoers.

“It's not her!” calls someone and then everyone goes back to their conversations. I put my face in my hands.

“You need a drink,” says Jenny, but instead of following her to the bar I beeline for the bathroom. I don't see anyone else I know yet, so I'm going to use this temporary reprieve to make myself as presentable as possible. Or sneak out the back.

There's someone in the one-stall ladies' room. Feeling a little panicky, I slip into the other option and flip on the lights. In the mirror I see my hair is wilder than usual, completely undeterred by the purple headband I have on, and flecked with green paint. I also have a gummy stripe of dried zinc yellow marching from forehead to eyelid, stopping by way of my eyebrow. I must have also wiped my rinsewater hands on my leggings one too many times because the thighs are covered with gray finger trails, and this smock will not pass as a shirt again until it's been washed. Twice. Maybe I can turn it inside out. Or maybe the back door is really the best plan.

Or maybe I should not care about this any more than I did before I knew who the party was for. For years I've been busy cleaning myself up to be good enough for Mitchell. I've been twisting myself up in knots to keep my friendship with Renee. In Minnow Bay, I've been doing nothing more than being myself, and it's been kind of wonderful. Why would I stop that now? I said I wasn't interested in Ben, so I shouldn't care what his mother or endless stream of brothers or fathers or cousins think of me. I shouldn't care if I look pretty or not. I shouldn't care that my breath smells like coffee and the venison jerky I found in a desk drawer in the studio earlier this afternoon.

The door opens. I guess I didn't lock it in my haste. I spin around ready to apologize.

It's Ben.

“GOD DAMMIT,” I shout.

His eyes fly open wide, his jaw drops, and he backs out and slams the door.

Shit. I splash some water on my eerie yellow eyebrow and turn around and reach for the door.

“I'm sorry,” I say before I even see him. I am standing in the men's bathroom with the door open wide and some yellow paint water is dripping into my eye. “It's my fault,” I tell Ben's chest. I can't look him in the eye. “I … the women's room was … so I … Look at me, and I needed to … And I smell like deer meat.” I cover my eyes with my hands.

“Lily, are you okay?” he asks. “Are you having a stroke?”

I put my hands down by my sides and sigh heavily. “Here I am,” I say, gesturing from hair to thighs. “This is me reinventing myself, getting my life together. Ta da!”

“Come out from the bathroom,” he says gently.

I try not to sniffle as he guides me into the narrow, dark hallway between bathrooms.

“What's wrong?” he asks.

I shake my head furiously, not sure if I should laugh or cry. Why do I care so much about this virtual stranger?

“Hey, hey, what's going on?” he asks. “I'm worried about you.”

I breathe in deeply and then try to tell him. “I'm trying to turn over a new leaf. Work harder, pay my bills on time, be an adult, mend my relationships, spend my time and energy on my art.”

“That all sounds really good.”

“And stay away from you.”

“Huh,” is all he says. “Based on our previous interactions, you'd think I'd be fine with that. But I'm not. The problem is, I can't stop thinking about you.”

“Oh,” I say. “Well.”

“I hate parties,” he tells me. “My mom knows that. She would have completely understood if I stayed home. But I knew you would be here tonight,” he says. “I knew Jenny and Colleen wouldn't miss this opportunity.”

I sigh. “So you saw it coming? I don't quite have all their schemes figured out.”

“Ever watch
Three's Company
?
I Love Lucy
?”

I shake my head no.

“Well, that explains it,” he says. “You'll get the hang of it here. Maybe you'll even come to like it.”

“I do like it,” I admit. “It's just that it's working very counter to my plan.”

“Like, your plan to stay away from me?”

I nod jerkily. “Exactly. I have to stay away from you, because otherwise I'll spend all my time thinking about what you think about me, and what kissing you is like, and whether you're the same man I met in Vegas or someone totally different. I mean, look at me now, trying to wash paint out of my eyebrows in the men's bathroom! Why should I care if there's paint in my eyebrows? There's always paint in my eyebrows. I'm a painter. That's where the paint goes. And I forgot to stop for lunch. So my breath smells like venison jerky. Who cares?”

“I don't care,” he says quietly. The hallway suddenly becomes very still.

I gingerly direct my gaze to his. “Are you going to kiss me again?”

“I want to. Do you want me to?”

“No,” I lie. “I'm in a relationship. It's not a great relationship, but it's a relationship nonetheless. Also I am getting my life together. And letting go of the past. You are the past. The distant past. The sexy distant past.”

His lips set in a straight line but he nods. “Okay. So then, to be clear, no kissing?”

“Right.”

“It seems like you would rather be kissing.”

“I would.”

“I would also rather be kissing,” he tells me.

I sigh heavily again. “Come on, man.”

He runs his hand over his jaw. “It's hard not to take this personally,” he tells me.

“Well, don't. Or do, and learn from this.”

“Um?”

“Next time a nice person shows up at your house and tells you she's married to you, don't be a dick about it.”

“Okay. Good note. Do you think I'm married to anyone else without my knowledge?” he asks.

“Well! You could be. You married me.”

“I really liked you,” he says.

“Please,” I tell him. “At the time, I wanted to believe that. I did believe that. Now I'm all, girl, please. You liked wearing nice suits, and picking up girls in Vegas, and being outrageous.”

“I did like all those things, but I didn't marry anyone else, did I?”

I shrug. “You tell me.”

“I didn't. I shouldn't have married you either.”

“Oh, here we go,” I say, thinking Ben's Mr. Hyde routine is about to unleash itself. But it doesn't.

“I shouldn't have married you in an all-night drag casino and pancake house. I should have surprised you in Chicago a week later and swept you off your feet. I should have sent you two dozen roses and a plane ticket. I should have said to myself, ‘Hey, dumb ass, this one is interesting, and beautiful, and good, and gives you a run for your money. Go after her.' But instead I married you one night and went back to my stupid life in stupid Silicon Valley the next. And that is what I did wrong.”

The words fall out of my brain. After a while I remember to breathe. Then I say, “You make me want to break up with my boyfriend.”

“Please do.”

“It might ruin my career,” I tell him, thinking of that exhibition offer going up like a puff of smoke.

“I sincerely doubt it,” he says. “But I'm sorry if it does.”

“I came to Minnow Bay to disentangle myself from you,” I say.

“I don't want to be disentangled,” he says. “And I like you with paint in your eyebrows.” With that he takes the pad of his thumb and wipes a drop of the paint-water from under my brow, stopping it before it can roll into my eye.

“Let's kiss now,” I say. “Just a little.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Let's.”

So we do.

*   *   *

And that is all we do. One soft and slow kiss, one little start to something that wants to be something else, and then we stop for all the right reasons, and his mother arrives and we all crouch behind our chairs and then jump out and yell surprise and she pretends to be surprised though clearly she is not, and then there is a loud and raucous Minnow Bay party in which Ben and I look at each other too much and touch not enough. Three of his brothers are there and they size me up quite openly, as do a couple of cousins. Mason, as in Colleen's ex Mason, is not there, so I assume he is deployed. Colleen is absent too. She is at home working on a scrapbook about her life for the meeting with the adoption lawyer Monday. Jenny leaves early too, pleading a headache. I get home at midnight—too late to call Mitchell—and barely get my shoes off before I drop to sleep exhausted on the big soft four-poster bed.