The People We Hate at the Wedding Read online

  “No, not yet.” Paul checks his watch: another fifteen minutes. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “It’s not like I’m going anywhere, am I?” Her bravado is thin; her voice cracks with nerves. “Well, then, let’s have it.”

  “Right, okay.” Paul pulls up a tuft of grass. He sifts through the blades until he finds the longest, thickest one, which he uses to tie a few loose bows. “What do you think you’d say if Hank … God, I really don’t know how to ask this.”

  And this is the truth. At Maryann’s, questions like Paul’s are so commonplace as to seem banal. But here, as he considers Wendy’s pearls and her frayed white cable-knit; as he looks beyond her, past the manicured grass of the clinic’s lawn to the Macaroni Grill and the other little suburban temples that dot the background, he wonders if it’s possible to say what he wants to say without coming across as some deviant sex pest.

  “Just ask!” Wendy suddenly shouts, and Paul flinches.

  “Okay, o-kay,” he says, and drops the blade of grass—now just a frayed mess of angry green knots. “What would you do if Hank came to you and … and proposed that, maybe, just as some sort of, like, experiment or something, you guys try to have a … like, a guest star in the bedroom once in a while? Not anyone with a recurring role—that’s not what I mean. Not like when Lisa Kudrow played Phoebe’s twin once in a while on Friends. That’s not what I’m talking about. More like when—”

  “Paul.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m standing in garbage. I am literally standing in garbage.”

  “Okay? I mean, yes, of course, I know you are, and I’m very proud that you are, and—”

  Wendy shakes her head, slowly. Her white Carol Brady cut doesn’t move an inch. “I’m literally standing in garbage and you’re speaking in metaphor.”

  Paul scratches behind his ear. He shifts how he’s sitting, uncrossing his legs and then crossing them again. His ass is wet; the seat of his pants sticks to his skin.

  “I guess I see what you’re saying,” he mumbles. A spot of brightness burns on the back of his neck, and he feels his cheeks flush red. He says: “What would you do if Hank told you he wanted to start having threesomes?”

  “No one would want to have a threesome with Hank and me. My tits—which, incidentally, were nowhere to be found when I actually could’ve used them—sag around my ankles, and Hank’s got liver spots on his pecker. Anyone who saw us naked would run in terror.”

  A solid point, Paul concedes. This whole time he’d been wondering what would happen if he and Mark woke up with some John Doe sandwiched between them, but he’d never considered the fact that John Doe might not even want to be sandwiched between them to begin with.

  “But let’s just pretend for a second that they did,” he says. “Let’s pretend that you’ve got a horde of men lining up—”

  “Are they good looking?”

  “Sure. Yes. They’re good looking.”

  “How good looking?”

  “Very good looking. Now let me finish. Let’s say you’ve got a horde of very good-looking men lining up to have sex with you. Would you … I don’t know, would you want to sleep with a few of them? Under the pretext, of course, that it was sex and absolutely nothing more, and that it in no way was going to threaten your emotional relationship with Hank. I mean, would you … ask him for permission to, you know, do it?”

  Wendy thinks. For once her face is flushed free of the clicking jaw and twitching eyes and other anxious tics that have controlled her features since climbing into the can. A small success, Paul thinks.

  “Of course I would,” Wendy says. “And anyone who says that she wouldn’t is trying to sell you something.”

  Another plane arcs across the sky, and its contrail bleeds into the last remnants of the clouds.

  Paul asks, “Now, what if the tables were turned? What if Hank had a line of gorgeous women wanting to sleep with him, and he came and asked you for a get-out-of-jail-free card?”

  Wendy swats at a fly that’s circling her nose; she grips both sides of the trash can to steady herself.

  “Who says that he hasn’t?” she says.

  She looks uncomfortable, Paul thinks, and it’s got nothing to do with the trash can.

  He asks, “What’d you do?”

  “I slapped him,” she says. “And then I told him he was lucky I hadn’t kicked him in the balls, and that if he asked me again, he’d better start looking for a divorce attorney.”

  “You sound like you regret that.”

  “Maybe I do? I don’t know. I’m a jealous bitch, Paul. I really am. But then I think to myself, a lot of women would have done the same thing, right? More than that—a lot of people would have done the same thing.” She clicks her jaw and says, “So, what, Mark’s asking you to spice things up?”

  “I never said that.”

  “You’re an awful liar.”

  She peers down into the trash can and says: “Relationships are awful. They’ll kill you, right up to the point where they start saving your life.”

  Paul reaches for another tuft of grass. He scours his brain for some winning response—a gem of wisdom that will complicate and trump Wendy’s—but nothing comes to mind. Instead, the alarm on his phone starts singing: a digitized Bach cantata that Mark downloaded for him, and that he hardly ever recognizes.

  “Twenty minutes is up,” he says, looking away from his watch and standing up. Blood rushes to his head. A wave of dizziness washes over him. “You’re done for the day.”

  Wendy’s shoulders fall away from her ears, and her chest deflates, like some balloon that’s been lodged just above her heart has finally burst.

  “Give me a hand getting out of here, would you?”

  She wipes both palms against her khakis, then reaches a hand out for Paul. He takes it, wrapping his fingers around hers to help her balance, and she carefully steps out of the trash can and onto the grass. They both stare down at her feet. Oil-soaked basil coats three of her toes, and her ankles are caked in what looks like vodka sauce. Three worms of spaghetti orbit her left calf.

  Wendy stares down at the mess and paws her soles against the grass. Paul moves a wiry strand of hair away from her eyes, then leans over and quickly kisses her cheek.

  “What was that for?” she asks. She’s still hoofing her feet against the ground, trying to wipe them clean.

  “I don’t know,” Paul says.

  Behind him, Paul hears the smooth swoosh of the clinic’s electronic door sliding open. Then, a voice Paul recognizes calls his name. He cringes as he hears it beckon him inside.

  * * *

  Goulding flips through an anemic file folder, reading and then rereading the three pages it contains. Paul watches him from across the desk. He’s sitting in the same chair that, minutes ago, was occupied by the woman with the flailing arms—the wife of the clinic’s latest victim—and he’s pretty certain he can smell traces of her perfume: something citrusy and cloying. It’s either that or the overpriced candle that’s flickering on the credenza behind Goulding’s desk. Paul clears his throat, but the doctor doesn’t look up from the folder, so he takes a moment to gaze around the office. He’s been in here a hundred times before, but he still can’t get over how industriously the place has been littered with utter crap. Expensive crap, but still crap. An antique sword uncovered from some Ottoman treasure trove extends across the top of a bookshelf. In the corner, by the office’s door, a small wooden bear hugs the base of a Black Forest hall stand. Propped on top of a Louis Vuitton steamer trunk in the center of the room sits a glass Tommaso Barbi chessboard with one of the queens missing. They were all gifts, Goulding told Paul the first time he was in here, but Paul’s never believed him. Because, really, who in his right mind would spend over two grand on a terra-cotta dog the size of a go-kart, only to give it to a shrink?

  There’s art, too, but these selections Goulding takes credit for. The biggest piece hangs directly behind his desk: a Robert Gober drawing o
f two nude bodies in a languid, tangled embrace; his cock flaccid in a tuft of fine hair; a single nipple of hers sticking out like a speed bump from a shallow pothole. They’re all like this—images of the hypersexualized and risqué. A collection of early penis sketches from Warhol’s Sex Parts series, for example. The first time Paul saw the collection, his eyes shifting uncomfortably from torso to hip to ass, he asked the doctor if he had an interest in contemporary art, or possibly the human form. Goulding told him neither. “It’s a good way to get people to let their guard down,” he said. “Sex makes people squirm.”

  Across the desk, the doctor closes the folder and presses his fingertips together.

  “I’m going to transfer you off the Wendy Kingsland case,” he says.

  Paul was expecting this; still, he feels the blood drain from his face.

  “I … I feel like we’ve been making some real headway, though,” he says. “Today she stood in the can for a full twenty minutes.”

  “Was that before or after you kissed her?”

  Goulding winks, which makes Paul feel at once more at ease and infinitely more uncomfortable.

  “I was proud of her.” He takes a half-assed stab at recovery. “I guess I got overly excited.”

  “And thankful, too, I imagine!” Goulding smiles. His veneers dazzle. “After all that relationship advice she gave you.”

  Paul’s jaw goes slack, and he stares at the doctor in disbelief. He tries to protest, but is only able to manage a deflated huh.

  Goulding unclasps his hands and raises his palms. He shrugs. “It’s my clinic, Paul,” he says, as if ownership alone is a sufficient enough explanation for this level of Orwellian fuckery. “I know things.”

  Out on the lawn, someone picks up Wendy’s garbage can and lugs it back toward the clinic’s storage shed. A member of the custodial crew crouches on her hands and knees to untangle fettuccini from flattened blades of grass.

  Along the convex face of a copper paperweight, Paul sees his own distorted reflection. And then, looming in the background behind him, the bookshelf. The ottoman saber. Rows upon rows of Goulding’s books, their spines forming bands of white, red, and black. A hundred copies of the same analytic trilogy: Murdering Your Compulsion, Killing Your Obsession, Torturing Your Way to a Peaceful Mind.

  “I guess my point, Paul, is: Do you want to help people? Do you still want to help people?”

  “Of course.”

  “Or, do you want to be helped?”

  Paul looks down: this is a fine distinction.

  “That’s what I thought,” Goulding says, before Paul can answer. “So, tomorrow you’ll be starting on a new case. A rather interesting one, I’d say. I’ll be supervising, at least until we’re … back on the same page again. But we could really use a man with your … physical capabilities.” He slides the folder that he’s been reading across the table. Paul opens it and sees a picture of the man he saw sitting in Goulding’s office earlier that afternoon.

  Goulding adds, “And I want to make it perfectly clear: this isn’t a demotion. I in no way want you thinking about that. In fact, my worst fear with all this is that tonight you’ll find yourself sitting across the table from … Mark? Is that your partner’s name?… and you’ll be complaining about what an unfair guy I am.” Goulding chuckles. He buttons and then unbuttons his blazer. “So: no talk of demotion. Rather, let’s both look at this as a learning experience where you can really start to challenge yourself.”

  The air-conditioning kicks on—a subtle industrial whirl—and Paul begins to read.

  Rick Erwing. Terrified of driving. Is irrevocably convinced he’ll hit someone, or has hit someone, without knowing it. Each morning he spends nearly four hours circling his block in his blue ’98 Camry, looking for dead bodies. The pattern’s so predictable, so punctual and exact, that the neighbors have reported scheduling their mornings around it.

  Paul’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He imagines his mother on the other end of the line, her lips pursing as she waits for him to answer, and he reaches down to silence it.

  Alice

  May 17

  “Have you RSVPed yet?” she asks, and cradles the phone against her shoulder.

  “I said I’m not going.”

  “Goddamn it, Paul.”

  “I already told you, Mark and I are doing something that weekend.”

  “I refuse to acknowledge that glamping with a bunch of fucking homos in the Poconos is an excuse to miss Eloise’s wedding.”

  “Actually, our plans have changed,” he says. “We’re going to Six Flags in New Jersey now.”

  “The repulsiveness of your narcissism is actually impressive.”

  “So is your willingness to grovel at Eloise’s feet.”

  She wants to scream. Instead, she just comes out with it: “She asked me to be a bridesmaid.”

  “What did you just say?”

  “I got an e-mail from her this morning. She said that it would mean a lot to her. Invited me to the bachelorette party in London. The whole nine yards. Even told me I could bring a date.”

  “You’re not actually thinking of doing it, are you?”

  “I don’t know. I have to go.”

  “What, got another date with a married dude?”

  She never should have told Paul about Jonathan, she thinks. She knew it was a mistake as soon as she mentioned it to him, the way he pressed her for details like he was taking record of her sins.

  “No, asshole.” She lowers her voice. “I have my group.”

  “Oh.”

  Paul’s quiet for a moment, and Alice relishes the silence and then the white noise that drowns it out. Office chairs squeaking, Xerox machines belching copies, her brother’s rhythmic exhalations, sounding at once right next to her and also twenty-seven hundred miles away.

  But then he says: “He’s never going to leave her, you know.”

  “You’re quoting lines from movies now.” Alice pinches the bridge of her nose. A migraine threatens. Tiny fists practice right hooks against her temples. “And besides, I don’t want him to leave her,” she lies. “It would ruin the whole point of what we’re doing in the first place.”

  “Sure, pal.”

  “Good-bye, Paul.”

  “I swear to God, Alice, if you agree to be a bridesmaid in that fucking—”

  She hangs up and immediately turns to her computer. In a flurry, she signs into her personal e-mail and finds the note from Eloise; she doesn’t bother rereading it, she just clicks reply. Flexing her fingers, she types furiously, punishing the keys: Yes. Absolutely. Count me in. Xo. A. Send.

  Alice watches the e-mail vanish into the ether, then she leans back in her chair and breathes. She glances around the corner of her cube to see if she can spot Jonathan; he’s on the phone. Beyond him, smog wraps around the shoulders of the Hollywood Hills. She fantasizes for an instant about what he’d look like dressed as Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Shit, she thinks. She sent that e-mail too quickly. The way Eloise had reached out to her had been so precise and charming, filled with just enough anglicisms to remind Alice that she lived in London (colour, theatre, aubergine), while coming across as only mildly pretentious or phony. She’d even told her to bring a date, for Christ’s sake. And how had Alice replied? With five words. Not even a complete fucking sentence; just a string of brutish fractals.

  She opens a new window and begins to type. Dearest Eloise, she writes. Please forgive me. But then—no. God, no. That sounds like she fucking killed someone. Try again. She cracks her knuckles. My apologies, dear sister. “Dear sister.” Too Little House on the Prairie. And also, Paul was right: she is their half sister. She’s not good at this; she doesn’t think in platitudes. Eloise, look, I’m sorry. I was yelling at Paul, who was being very Paul. She holds down the delete button again. Throwing Paul under the bus—now she’s just being a traitor. She snaps both her fingers together and blinks, trying to will herself into inspiration. But then, reaching for the keyboard onc
e again, she catches a glimpse of the time, bold and angular in the left-hand corner of the screen: 2:45.

  She’s going to be late.

  * * *

  The Healing Women’s Grieving Group meets on Tuesdays at three o’clock, in the basement of a community center near Robertson and Melrose. It sounds drabber than it is, Alice tells herself as she circles the parking lot at ten past three, searching for a space. Last year, the city renovated the center; men were hired to paint over the graffiti and update its utilities and install oceanic-themed steel cutouts along its façade: zigzaggy waves hiding the gutters on the roof, a dolphin leaping over the front door. It all combines to create a sort of early aughts, South Orange County aesthetic (all the lettering’s done in stainless steel; there’s an enthusiastic embrace of both teal and purple), but still, despite her taste, she finds it charming. She pulls her Camry into a spot in a far corner of the lot, next to a utility shed. And besides, she thinks as she grabs her purse and locks up, they have free food. Weak coffee and these cheap butter cookies that she’d never be caught dead eating in public, but that here, in the community center, she devours by the handful. It’s fine. I’m allowed. I’m grieving.

  “Oh, gosh,” she says. The door to the basement slams shut behind her, and she can hear its metallic echo bouncing up the staircase. The women in the group have already arranged themselves into a rough elliptical (“the healing circle”), and each of them turns to look at her. “I’m so sorry I’m late. There was … traffic. On Santa Monica.”

  The group’s leader, a postmenopausal Diane Keaton–ish figure named Karen, smiles. “It’s fine, Alice. We were just getting started.” In one hand she holds a steaming cardboard cup; with her free hand, she points to an empty folding chair. “We’ve saved a place for you.”

  Alice mouths thank you and bows shallowly. She immediately regrets doing this—the whole namaste bowing thing. She always does, and yet she can’t seem to stop. Whenever she wanders into somewhere vaguely metaphysical—a one-off yoga class, a high-end spa in Brentwood, grieving groups—she finds herself hinging over, bowing. It’s a weird, uncontrollable affectation, and a phony one, at that. It’s not that she actually believes bowing to be some transcendental sign of respect—she doesn’t. Rather, it’s more a matter of fear of getting found out, she figures. Like if she doesn’t bow, these women will see her for the person she really is: someone who doesn’t buy into the healing power of groups, or crystals, or kelp facials; someone who’s here because her brother begged her to go; someone who suddenly wants a stiff whiskey-soda, light—very light—on the soda.