had the toast so she can go. Four hundred people and not one of them Carter Bellinger, if he doesn’t come she’ll die stuck to this chair. Waiters know old ladies don’t eat so the hors d’oeuvre trays never come here. By the time she’s free, the buffet will be picked clean. Fine. They’ll be sorry when they find her desiccated corpse. The band is repeating numbers, everybody’s hanging in even though the party is beyond tired. Mom’s getting loud; that laugh sets Steffy’s teeth on edge. The grownups are drinking buckets because it’s rude to leave before the father of the bride gets up on the bandstand and makes his stupid speech.
Funny. Mr Kalen isn’t anywhere. Neither is Dad. Steffy would just feel better if he walked in and explained. By this time Mom’s run out of people she knows. She’s so lame, faking fun conversations with the bandleader and cute waiters because she can’t leave until it’s over, she just can’t. Will Dad and Mom will dance together or fight and kill each other if he does come in? God she hates being here, listening to Grammy breathe, but it beats being out there pretending to have fun.
‘Look at Nenna dancing, she’s frantic!’ For crap’s sake, can’t Mom’s friends wait until they’re out of fucking earshot?
‘Shh, the girl! Poor thing, it’s always hardest on the kids.’
That’s Jen Cashwell’s mother, grinning like a shark: ‘It’s what Nenna gets for fishing in cold water. She could have married somebody local, but no.’
And Mrs Von Harten, Mom’s best friend! ‘Northerners, it’s anybody’s ballgame. How can you tell what a man will do when you don’t know who his people are?’
The worst was the Carlson sisters, after they made their manners and pushed off into the mainstream. The ugly one said to the entire room, ‘Lord, Nenna’s plastered to Sammy Kristofferson like a dog humping a tree.’
When Carter comes she’ll get up and punch them in the face.
After a while Steffy knuckles. To survive around here you have to pretend, and she hears herself saying in her mother’s fake party voice, ‘Lovely party, don’t you think?’
Parked next to Grammy Henderson, Carter’s great-grandmother rises to the occasion. ‘Yes indeed it is.’
Old Mrs Bellinger is no picnic, talks to herself, ugly things, but Carter’s mom will make Carter stop by and kiss her as soon as he comes in, so Steffy sits here with the great-grandmothers on velvet seats that were new back when these old ladies were still real. He’d better not bring some skank with love bites and her boobs all smeared with whisker burn, this is one insult she is not prepared to take.
‘Steffy honey, what are you doing stuck back here?’ Oh shit, it’s Dad, squinting like a shipwrecked sailor washed up on the beach. He looks OK, except he isn’t. His outline is unstable, like a first-grader quit drawing his face before it was done.
Everything piles in on her and she cries, ‘Where were you?’
He won’t exactly look at her. He doesn’t know where Steffy stands with the mess between him and Mom. He doesn’t even know if she knows there is one, clueless Dad. He’s all ulp. Blush. ‘I was on the phone.’
‘Where were you all this time?’
‘Long distance.’ There’s too much to explain so he doesn’t explain any of it. ‘Business call.’
‘Aunt Gayle.’
Does he have to yap like a dog? ‘She’s not your aunt!’
Crap. Steffy’s just too tired to say anything back. Distressed by her silence, he adds a sweetener: ‘Tell you what. I’ll send Mother Henderson to rescue you, OK?’
Steffy just sits, trying to figure out how she feels about him.
‘OK?’ He waits a little too long for her to say it’s OK, which it isn’t. He gives her a miserable wink. ‘Tell you what. We’ll go out after, Heath Bar Mint Blizzards, my treat.’
‘Whatever.’
He’ll be too far away to hear her groan. Dad pushes off from the gilt chairs and he’s gone for good, just like everybody else. Probably he and Mom are out on one of the long porches, having a fight. No. Look at him, he’s trying to grab Mom out in the middle of the floor. She breaks free and dances away with Mr Rivard the club tennis pro like they’re in love, all sexy and fuck you.
Steffy hates her dad for being helpless and stupid. It’s late and she’s starved but the thought of chewing and swallowing in front of all these people brings up issues. Sometimes it’s easier to die.