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“This is crazy.”
“One minute.”
Turning away, I picked up the wine bottle from the snow-covered deck table and went back inside. I brushed by him—not facing it. Him. That was my strategy. The dining table was a mess, and so I picked up the used napkins, the empty containers, blew out the candles. I didn’t want to do this anymore.
When I came back to the couch where everyone was sitting, Garrett was back inside.
“Marianne’s suggesting we play a juvenile game of truth or dare,” Rob said.
I burst out laughing, then crumbled into the couch with Garrett, and he caught me in his arms.
“What’s so funny?” Rob asked.
“Nothing, really,” I said.
“It’s just a dumb inside joke. Marianne,” I shouted, “we are not playing truth or dare. We are all almost thirty years old, some older—ahem—and if we’re playing any parlor games, then my vote’s for Apples to Apples.”
Garrett giggled, snorted a bit, and spilled his wine on the couch. Jen sat down beside him on the other side and said, “I’m getting tired. Would it be okay if we left soon?”
“Dessert!” I shouted. “You can’t leave until you have dessert, and it’s chocolate, and delicious.”
The room swooped around me when I stood up, but it didn’t matter. I was now on a mission to provide dessert to my guests, and nothing could stop me. Not even Rob gently pulling me away from the kitchen. Not even Marianne saying something about her dessert and Cash swearing off sugar, and didn’t I want to serve her fruit-only apple crumble?
“I’m getting the dessert. And you guests can decide if you want to eat it.”
I shook Rob off and clattered back to the table with a container of Christmas cookies from my mother’s and ice cream, and then dropped them in the center of the table. “Look,” I said, “I even have a proper scooper. And I have great form.”
“No one wants any ice cream, Kelly,” Rob said.
“I want some ice cream. Fuck you all if you don’t.”
“Kelly,” Rob said quietly. “You need coffee, water, and no more booze; you don’t need ice cream. It might be time for us all to call it a night.”
“What’s your fucking problem? It’s ice cream. A dinner party deserves dessert. Even if it’s already been ruined by—every time I turn around someone’s moving on with their fucking life. Oh, marriage, oh, babies, oh, let’s everyone be together and behappy. And then I’m the bad guy because I like things the way they are, and that’s me not wanting to move on with my life. Yawn, fucking yawn.”
I pulled out a chair, sat down, and began to eat the ice cream directly from the carton. “There, now it has my germs all over it. Kelly’s contagious—ruining lives left right and center, and now, spoiling the dessert.”
Jen didn’t say a word as she walked past me. Garrett moved to join her. He kissed the top of my head. “Kelly, it’s been a ride. Rob, thanks for dinner. I’ll leave this mess to you both, and now, I’m going to dutifully go home and discuss my own.”
Marianne and Cash were already by the front door, holding court with Jen, who seemed frail and tiny.
“Well, it’s turned out like a family holiday anyway,” I said. “Complete with the drunk one drowning her sorrows. Have a wonderful evening, everyone.” I started to sing the Talking Heads. Because this was not a beautiful life.
The evening spiraled deep down into that place I went whenever I felt cornered. The tide of regret rose up like bile—every awful fight I’d ever had with my mother, with Rob. The result was always the same: a giant chasm in the road that was my life.
There were quiet murmurs as jackets were passed from the hallway closet to their owners. Rob apologized on my behalf and then locked the door once everyone had gone.
Garrett says not to marry him. But Iamgetting married.
Rob didn’t say a word. Instead, he started picking up the plates, crashing around in the kitchen, rinsing, loading the dishwasher. I angled my anger in his direction, letting it drip like the melting ice cream, not knowing how to stop the words once they started.
“Way to back me up there!” I shouted. “As usual, when I need you, you’re not there. When you want something to happen, it’s a big fucking deal. Like a proposal for a marriage I never wanted, in the middle of Christmas with your hawk-eyed mother there to swoop in and tell me, yet again, that I don’t deserve you. And, here I go, just proving it, didn’t I? A big ‘Oh, she’s off again, Kelly’s drunk and stupid, and it’s all her fault the party got ruined.’”
Rob wiped down the table, and left me sitting there as he put the room back to normal.
“You’re drunk,” he said. “You’re going to hate yourself tomorrow for the things you’ve said. For what you’ve done. How mean you were to that girl. She’s not the kind of girl you go around hurting, Kelly. She’s not like you. She seems kind, nice, and genuine.”
“And I’m none of those things?”
