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And in response, my mother, in an act that she maintains was completely unlike her, asked him to sit back down for just a minute and join them for another Shirley Temple. This baby-faced guy, who was pale-skinned and very southern and bright-blue-eyed, and who called her miss when he asked for his paper back and who wasn’t anything like the guy that she thought she’d end up with: not wealthy or ambitious or Jewish. Not even Jewish.
While they were waiting for his drink to arrive—the story goes—she excused herself and went into the bathroom and locked herself in a stall and cried because she knew she’d never be okay without him.
Then she washed her face and checked her reflection in the mirror and went back outside and asked him to stay with her in New York and reconsider what he wanted to do with his life and let her raise the children the religion she needed to and marry her one day. Or, just to stay.
“Emmy!” My father screamed to me now. “What are you doing over there? Come over here. I want to kiss you hello, little beauty.”
I hated when he called me little beauty. How had he turned out six-four, and his only daughter five-three? I looked at Berringer to see if he heard, but he was wrapped up in a conversation with the high school boys and had forgotten all about me.
I headed over to my father. “What’s going on?” I said, as he leaned down and gave me a hug hello.
He pointed to his shirt. “The guys nicknamed me Mr. Smooth. Isn’t that something?”
“It’s something,” I said.
He looked down at his shirt, running his finger along the MR. SMOOTH. “It is something.”
I delivered my mother’s brief message that she was going to bed, and he looked up at me, more than a little worried at what I’d said, like he had maybe done something wrong, which he hadn’t. It was just that they were rarely apart. That was the thing about my parents. They were still so much in love. Thirty-plus years later. They remained the only answer I had to the question I had asked Josh and Berringer in the car. Who was happily married? Who still loved each other? The problem was that with your parents, it sometimes seems like it doesn’t count.
“Does she want me to come home?”
“Nope. She said, Just tell Dad I’m going to feed the Moynihan-Richardses and then pretend to go to sleep. Honest. All’s quiet on the western front.’”
More convinced than before, he rubbed his hands together, relieved. “Then how about another round?” He turned toward everyone, talking more loudly, almost screaming, really. “How about another round, boys?”
He started walking toward the bar, but then he tripped, knocking two beers right off the table.
“Whoa there, Mr. Smooth,” I said, trying to sit him back down. “Let me get it, okay?”
“Thank you, baby. I’m not used to drinking,” he said, reaching up and touching my cheek. His palm was warm and wet from the alcohol. “You happy tonight?” he asked.
“I’m happy tonight.”
He looked at me, trying to consider if that were true, trying not to act like he was considering. He had this small fear—my father—inherited from my mother’s Jewish worriedness, that if I weren’t completely okay, he had failed me.
He was the same way with Josh, which was how I knew what was coming next. He looked over to where Josh was standing, talking to a friend from medical school. Josh was clenching and unclenching his left hand, laughing. I guess they were joking around about the ring that was going to be there soon enough. I guess they were joking about everything that was coming next.
My father was smiling at him, like he’d received the information he needed. I was tempted to tell him the truth—that it was looking like it was turning out to be, at the very least, a little more complicated than that.
But I knew our dad wouldn’t be able to handle that. He was the ultimate people-pleaser. That was where Josh got it from. The only instinct in him that even began to rival the people-pleasing gene was the overprotective one for Josh and me. If he had to handle this situation, the two sides of him would be forced to go head to head, and I worried he’d combust. I wasn’t ready to watch that.
“They’re going to be really happy, don’t you think so? Meryl and Josh, I mean,” he said, turning back to face me. “Don’t you think Meryl’s going to make him happy?”
I touched the top of his head. “Probably,” I said.
Clearly I hadn’t been paying very good attention to what was going on elsewhere at the tavern, but I still couldn’t believe that I had failed to notice that I knew, all too well, the two twenty-something women drinking chardonnay at the bar. How could I not tell from the back of their heads? Those two perfectly straightened heads. I should have at least recognized that I recognized them. But it took coming up right next to them at the bar, actually, to realize that they were none other than Stacey Morgan and her sidekick, Sheila Beth Gold: two girls I’d graduated high school with, still best friends apparently, and even prettier and more put together than they had been a decade ago. At one point, in high school, I could have almost been considered friends with them. We went to the same parties, hung out with the same group of guys, sat at lunch tables near each other in the back of the cafeteria. But now it was like they were donning bright HAZARD signs—ready to announce exactly where they were on their road from Superwoman City Girl to Soccer Momdom. Even if I were still with Matt, they would have thought my “film dreams” were just a quirk that would one day pass. And now that I didn’t even have Matt as a common ground, well, I wasn’t counting on the never-ending fishermen’s wives project to win me any admiration.
Before they saw me, I tried to back away undetected, but—as seemed to be turning into the theme of the night—it was too late.
“Oh, my God, Emmy Everett!” Stacey said. She reached for my arm. She reached for my arm and held on. “Sheila, look! Emmy freaking Everett. I don’t believe it. How are you, girly?”
“Hey, Stacey,” I said, leaning in and patting her shoulder. It was an awkward move—not quite a hug, not quite not a hug. It was worse than if I hadn’t done anything at all. “Sheila,” I said.
“What are you doing here?” they said in unison.
I smiled, taking advantage of the time it gave me to try to mobilize my inner troops. I could get in and out of this conversation unharmed. Of course I could. I just needed to keep moving.
“Oh, it’s actually a bachelor party for my brother,” I said.
