Everybody Has Everything - By Katrina Onstad Page 0,5
needed a new friend.
Across the table, James was head to head with Marcus, the groom. James did most of the talking, arms and hands punching. He sensed Ana watching him and looked over, gave her a quick smile mid-sentence, then turned back to it.
“Did you think it was strange that no one walked me down the aisle?”
“Oh,” said Ana. “I didn’t—”
“We’re orphans, Marcus and I. My parents are dead, and his are fuckwits.” Sarah chewed ice out of a water glass. “Usually, it’s totally fine, but today, I did mind. I feel like I can say that to you.” Ana nodded.
“Most of these people are work friends. Nice people. We haven’t lived here that long, really, when I think about it. It’s all pretty new.”
Now Ana recognized what was strange about the small crowd: Barely anyone in the room looked over fifty. Ana remembered the old schoolhouse where she had been married, and James’s great-aunts and -uncles in their wheelchairs in locked position tucked away in the corners like umbrellas.
On the edges of the empty dance floor, a small child swayed by himself, wearing a rock ‘n’ roll T-shirt – ABCD split by a lightning bolt, like the logo for the band AC/DC – with a blazer over top, hair hanging in his eyes. How old? Ana had no idea.
She had seen the boy earlier, in the bathroom. As Ana dried her hands on the automatic dryer, his little hands had suddenly brushed against hers, his body up against her skirt.
“Don’t be rude!” The boy’s had mother appeared, pulling him away. Ana shrugged. “I’m so sorry,” said the mother, unfolding a soft towel from the stack by the sink. She rubbed furiously at the boy’s hands. He looked at Ana quizzically, silent. “Did you do the smart thing and leave yours at home?”
Ana sighed internally, knowing what she’d find at the next step of this conversation. “I don’t have kids.”
And so it came: the heavy pause, the sadness, the recovery. “Right, I get that, absolutely,” and the exaggerated eye roll at the small, wet child. It surprised Ana how often mothers played up their misery, as if she would find it comforting to pretend they would switch places with her.
Eighties pop rock blasted from the speakers. In the daytime, this room had probably been used for a conference, a PowerPoint presentation to bored executives trying to keep their tortoise necks from snapping down to sleep. Ana attended these kinds of meetings, and had occasionally led them. She knew the closed air of this kind of room, the scent of boredom, the water glasses and pens lined up next to blank tablets of paper. She didn’t like to think of Sarah’s wedding shadowed by the ordinary in this way.
“You forget all about the wedding when you realize you’re in a marriage,” said Ana, her eyes now on James, still talking.
“I know. We’ve been together so long, I’m not sure why it mattered at all to Marcus. This strange traditional side emerged as soon as I showed him the pee stick.”
Then the sound of knives clinking on glasses, and a small cheer. Sarah rolled her eyes at Ana with a smile that discredited the eye roll. Marcus leaned across the table and gave his bride a kiss, so deep and certain that Ana looked away. James did not. He let out a whoop.
When Ana turned back, Sarah was beaming and cackling, her big sound bouncing below the DJ’s music like an extra track. The cake appeared, carried by two sweating women in manly black vests and white dress shirts. Three tiers of white butter cream icing, ribbons of chocolate down the side. A round of applause. There were no figurines on top. Ana remembered picking her bride and groom: James thought it would be funny to use two black people, or a pair of women. In the end, he let her pick, and she panicked and chose two that were so small her mother drunkenly asked if they were children.
The women placed the cake directly in front of Ana, which set off fireworks of flashing cameras.
“Oh, no, no. I’m not—” said Ana, sliding her chair closer to James, out of the way of Sarah and Marcus and all the years that this photo would exist in computer inboxes and desk drawers.
The sound in the room was beginning to bother her. A thrumming filled her skull, and her body craved the cool of the sheets waiting for her at home. The edges of