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He was still smiling at me. “Anything,” he said.
“Have you met Elizabeth?” When he didn’t answer, I tried to clarify for him. “Josh’s Elizabeth.”
“Emmy, you should probably be talking to Josh about this instead of me.”
I motioned across the table to where Josh was taking another tequila shot of his own, quickly—his face starting to get red, a little too flushed. “Josh is busy right now,” I said.
Berringer shook his head, keeping his eyes down. He certainly wasn’t smiling anymore.
“What?” I said. “She’s that great?”
He looked back up at me, reluctantly, offering a soft nod. “She’s pretty great,” he said.
I stared down at my empty shot glass, thinking of Meryl. She had just come to New York a couple of weeks ago for her final dress fitting, and had driven up to the Hilton in southern Connecticut to meet me for lunch. We ended up talking about this great documentary she had seen in L.A. about a filmmaker who was so in love with this old novel he read that he embarked on a countrywide journey to find the author, who hadn’t been heard from in over two decades. She got so excited telling me the story that she decided we absolutely had to see it together that day, and we ended up driving another hour and half to this beautiful old theater in Northampton, Massachusetts—the only place it was playing anywhere in New England. It was the best day I could remember having in a long, long time. It would be the easiest thing in the world to make the argument that she was pretty great too.
“The point is, things shouldn’t have gotten as far as they did with Elizabeth if he wasn’t going to back it up,” Berringer said. “Josh knows that. He knows it now. And wants to do the right thing here.”
“The right thing for whom?” I said.
He didn’t answer me, and I wanted to push it, ask him what that even meant—marrying Meryl or telling her the truth about Elizabeth?—but I wasn’t sure Berringer knew the answer. I also wasn’t sure that being right was as simple as I had been allowing for, as most of us allowed for, when we used it as an excuse to do what we thought we were supposed to do. Besides, what I wanted to ask Berringer more was which woman he thought Josh belonged with, and I knew he was never going to tell me that. He would say it wasn’t his judgment to make. And maybe it wasn’t. But I knew he had an idea anyway. He knew Josh better than anyone did—maybe even better than I did. He understood exactly what, in the end, he could and couldn’t do. What maybe he needed to do.
“Elizabeth’s a breeder,” he said. “She breeds these enormous dogs, you know.”
“Berringer,” I said slowly, the beginning of the tequila making its way to my head. “I’m beginning to think I don’t.”
Apparently, their story went something like this.
That year—Josh’s last of medical school, Meryl already in Los Angeles—Josh was volunteering a few times a month at a free clinic in Springfield, Massachusetts. There was a huge dog show in town at the Expo Center, which he wandered over to during his lunch break. Elizabeth was there, showing two of her dogs. Josh had told me a long time ago that he had this theory that an entire relationship was based on what occurred over the course of the first five minutes you know each other. That everything that came after those first minutes was just details being filled in. Meaning: you already knew how deep the love was, how instinctually you felt about someone. If one of you were saving the other at the beginning—like if you met during a car crash, for instance—you would continually take on that role (the savior, the saved) in various capacities for the length of the union. Or: if you didn’t inherently trust somebody, that, too, would be your gut reaction for as long as you knew each other, reaffirming itself beneath whatever good the other person tried to do for you.
“What happened in their first five minutes?” I asked Berringer now.
“Time stopped,” he said.
Sometime around the real last call—not the one the bartender had quietly pushed back in honor of one more final round of drinks—my father stood up, clinked his spoon to his glass, and made a quick toast to Josh. No big stories, no teary eyes. Just a wish for him of true happiness. Josh was very red at this point, watching our father, and I could tell he was having trouble focusing on what was being said, but when our father was finished, Josh stood up and hugged him anyway.
“To the happiest weekend of your life,” my father said. His voice all choked up, too thick.
“Oh, man, let’s get out of here,” I said, turning to Berringer.
I had already called a car service for the other guys. I had already made sure that was taken care of. Berringer nodded, but before we could stand up, my father was calling my name again, louder this time.
I looked up slowly, all eyes on me. “How about you?” He smiled, raised his glass. “You want to make a toast?”
Berringer caught my eye, not looking away. I tried looking around at this table of boys, none of whom I really knew.
Not anymore. Then I looked at Josh. He was avoiding looking back. What did I know about him? All I could think was that he had this whole other life that he hadn’t told me about until now. What else didn’t I know about this person I really thought I knew everything about?
I had done all sorts of research on weddings in preparation for a toast. I had read a good half-dozen books on what different wedding rituals meant, where the traditions came from. I’d planned on incorporating all sorts of the bizarre trivia into whatever speech I ultimately made. But it didn’t matter. For the life of me then, I couldn’t think of one single thing to say.
“Come on, Em,” my dad said. “Say something.”
Josh smiled at me, winked. “She doesn’t have to, Dad. Just drop it.”
I tried to smile back at him, feeling awful. Then I felt Berringer’s hand on my back.
“You know what?” he said. “She was just telling me she’s still doing some work on it. She’s not wasting it on you guys.”
I looked over at him gratefully—so gratefully, that it surprised me. It surprised both of us.
