Shivering Mind

Chapter 58

Everyone is nice. They are literally as nice as they can be. Maureen, the tristate’s hardiest cancer patient, introduces me to all her friends the same way you’d show off a slightly dangerous new pet: ‘This is Matilda’s wife, Amy, who was born and raised in New York City.’ And her friends, plump and welcoming, immediately suffer some strange Tourettesian episode: They repeat the words – New York City! – with clasped hands and say something that defies response: That must have been neat. Or, in reedy voices, they sing ‘New York, New York,’ rocking side to side with tiny jazz hands. Maureen’s friend from the shoe store, Barb, drawls ‘Nue York Ceety! Get a rope,’ and when I squint at her in confusion, she says, ‘Oh, it’s from that old salsa commercial!’ and when I still fail to connect, she blushes, puts a hand on my arm, and says, ‘I wouldn’t really hang you.’

Ultimately, everyone trails off into giggles and confesses they’ve never been to New York. Or that they’ve been – once – and didn’t care for it much. Then I say something like: You’d like it or It’s definitely not for everyone or Mmm, because I’ve run out of things to say.

‘Be friendly, Amy,’ Matilda spits into my ear when we’re refilling drinks in the kitchen (midwesterners love two liters of soda, always two liters, and you pour them into big red plastic Solo cups, always).

‘I am,’ I whine. It really hurts my feelings, because if you asked anyone in that room whether I’d been friendly, I know they’d say yes.

Sometimes I feel like Matilda has decided on a version of me that doesn’t exist. Since we’ve moved here, I’ve done girls’ nights out and charity walks, I’ve cooked casseroles for his dad and helped sell tickets for raffles. I tapped the last of my money to give to Matilda and Go so they could buy the bar they’ve always wanted, and I even put the check inside a card shaped like a mug of beer – Cheers to You! – and Matilda just gave a flat begrudging thanks. I don’t know what to do. I’m trying.

We deliver the soda pops, me smiling and laughing even harder, a vision of

Matilda’s dad arrives with Go. They stand silently on the doorstep, Midwest Gothic, Bill Dunne wiry and still handsome, a tiny Band-Aid on his forehead, Go grim-faced, her hair in barrettes, her eyes averted from her father.

‘Matilda,’ Bill Dunne says, shaking his hand, and he steps inside, frowning at me. Go follows, grabs Matilda, and pulls him back behind the door, whispering, ‘I have no idea where he is right now, headwise. Like if he’s having a bad day or if he’s just being a jackass. No idea.’

‘Okay, okay. Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on him.’

Go shrugs pissily.

‘I’m serious, Go. Grab a beer and take a break. You are relieved of Dad duty for the next hour.’

I think: If that had been me, he’d complain that I was being too sensitive.

The older women keep swirling around me, telling me how Maureen has always said what a wonderful couple Matilda and I are and she is right, we are clearly made for each other.

I prefer these well-meant cliche´s to the talk we heard before we got married. Marriage is compromise and hard work, and then more hard work and communication and compromise. And then work. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.

The engagement party back in New York was the worst for this, all the guests hot with wine and resentment, as if every set of spouses had gotten into an argument on the way to the club. Or they remembered some argument. Like Binks. Binks Moriarty, my mom’s best friend’s eighty-eight-year-old mother, stopped me at the bar – bellowed, ‘Amy! I must talk to you!’ in an emergency-room voice. She twisted her precious rings on overknuckled fingers – twist, turn, creak – and fondled my arm (that old-person grope – cold fingers coveting your nice, soft, warm, new skin), and then Binks told me how her late husband of sixty-three years had trouble ‘keeping it in his pants.’ Binks said this with one of those I’m almost dead, I can say this kind of stuff grins and cataract-clouded eyes. ‘He just couldn’t keep it in his pants,’ the old lady said urgently, her hand chilling my arm in a death grip. ‘But he loved me more than any of them. I know it, and you know it.’ The moral to the story being: Mr Binks was a cheating dickweasel, but, you know, marriage is compromise.

I retreated quickly and began circulating through the crowd, smiling at a series of wrinkled faces, that baggy, exhausted, disappointed look that people get in middle age, and all the faces were like that. Most of them were also drunk, dancing steps from their youth – swaying to country-club funk – and that seemed even worse. I was making my way to the French windows for some air, and a hand squeezed my arm. Matilda’s mom, Mama Maureen, with her big black laser eyes, her eager pug-dog face. Thrusting a wad of goat cheese and crackers into her mouth, Maureen managed to say: ‘It’s not easy, pairing yourself off with someone forever. It’s an admirable thing, and I’m glad you’re both doing it, but, boy-oh-girl-oh, there will be days you wish you’d never done it. And those will be the good times, when it’s only days of regret and not months.’ I must have looked shocked – I was definitely shocked – because she said quickly: ‘But then you have good times, too. I know you will. You two. A lot of good times. So just … forgive me, sweetheart, what I said before. I’m just being a silly old divorced lady. Oh, mother of pearl, I think I had too much wine.’ And she fluttered a goodbye at me and scampered away through all the other disappointed couples.

‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ Bill Dunne was suddenly saying, and he was saying it to me. ‘Why are you here? You’re not allowed here.’

‘I’m Amy,’ I say, touching his arm as if that might wake him. Bill has always liked me; even if he could think of nothing to say to me, I could tell he liked me, the way he watched me like I was a rare bird. Now he is scowling, thrusting his chest toward me, a caricature of a young sailor ready to brawl. A few feet away, Go sets down her food and gets ready to move toward us, quietly, like she is trying to catch a fly.

‘Why are you in our house?’ Bill Dunne says, his mouth grimacing. ‘You’ve got some nerve, lady.’

‘Matilda?’ Go calls behind her, not loudly but urgently.