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I blink. Then say indignantly, “You mean at the sports bar? But you were so nasty! I didn’t think you were serious.”
He looks hurt. “I bared my soul to you, and you thought it was nasty. Nice.”
“Seriously,” I say. “You were horrible. You couldn’t possibly have expected me to think you meant a word that you said—”
“I was mortally wounded!” Chaz insists. “The woman I loved, and whom I thought loved me in return—don’t lie, you even said at Jill Higgins’s wedding the night before that we were going to try taking things to another level—had just pledged herself to another!”
“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” I say. “Agreeing to take things to another level and saying that I’m in love with you are two completely different things.”
“If I was nasty, like you say, I had a right to be,” Chaz says. “You were acting like a crazy woman. Getting yourself engaged to a guy who is so completely wrong for you—”
“You didn’t seem to have any objections when Luke and I got together last summer,” I point out.
“Sure, I had no objections to your sleeping with him,” Chaz says. “I never thought you’d want to marry the guy. Especially when I knew perfectly well you weren’t in love with him.”
Still pi
“Before the Great Christmas Sewing Machine Incident, maybe,” Chaz says. “But not after. It just took you awhile to admit it to yourself.”
I blink at him, trying to figure out if what he’s saying is really true. There’s a part of me that’s sure it isn’t.
But there’s another part of me that’s equally scared it is.
“But you finally came around to admitting you’re in love with me now,” Chaz says as he reaches for the room service menu. “So what does it matter? Now I need sustenance. All of this cuckolding makes a knight hungry. What should we have? Beef nachos supreme? Or… ooh, bacon and cheddar potato skins with sour cream. Such fine fare this establishment offers… oh, wait. Cream cheese and turkey pinwheels. Who could resist?”
“I can’t tell him,” I burst out.
Chaz stares down at me. “About the cream cheese and turkey pinwheels?”
“No,” I say, poking him through the sheet. “Get off me, you weigh a ton.” Obligingly, Chaz slides off me. “Luke. He can never know.”
Chaz leans up on one elbow, his head in his hand. “I can see why,” he says, regarding me, his blue eyes expressionless. “Who eats turkey with cream cheese? That’s a disgusting combination.”
“No,” I say, sitting up. “About us. He can never know about us.”
Chaz’s tone doesn’t change. “You’re going to marry Luke and keep me around as a boy toy? How twenty-first century of you.”
“I… I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I say. “How can I… I mean, he loves me.”
Chaz taps the menu. “Lizzie. Let’s just order. We don’t have to figure it all out tonight. And they stop serving at eleven.”
I chew my lower lip. “I just,” I say. “I… I’m not very good at this. At being… bad.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Chaz says with a grin. “I think you did an exemplary job of it earlier.”
I lift up one of the flat, uncomfortable Knight’s I
We barely order our nachos in time to make the eleven o’clock cutoff.
“Where were you last night?” Sarah wants to know when I come tromping into the house the next morning.
“And aren’t those the same clothes you were wearing yesterday?” Rose asks cattily.
Their eyes light up a second later, however, when Chaz follows me through the screen door.
“Chaz!” my mom cries, looking genuinely delighted. “What a surprise!”
“I’ll say.” Rose shoots me a look so laser sharp, it might have melted steel. “When did you get into town, Chaz? Don’t tell us… last night?”
“How sweet of you to come,” Mom says, going to give Chaz a hug. Having dated Shari for so long, he’s an old family favorite. Well, with my parents. My sisters don’t play favorites. Except among their kids.
“Of course I came,” Chaz says as my mom releases him and my dad wanders in from the den, his reading glasses perched on top of his head and the newspaper dangling from his fingers. “I was a big fan of Mrs. Nichols.”
“Well, my mother was something of a character,” Dad says, shaking Chaz’s hand. “Good to see you.”
Rose and Sarah, meanwhile, are taking in the beard burn that no amount of foundation on my part has so far been able to cover up. Chaz’s five o’clock shadow starts growing at approximately ten in the morning, and any kissing after that takes its toll. Conscious of their scandalized yet delighted gazes, I check out the new offerings—a pie from one of the neighbors, a floral arrangement from Gran’s dentist—while Chaz accepts Mom’s offer of coffee and a piece of the coffee cake the Huffmans brought over.
As soon as they’re out of earshot Rose takes two quick steps toward me and hisses, “Sssssslut,” in my ear while giving me a quick pinch on the butt as she heads into the kitchen to refill her own coffee mug. I let out a yelp—she always gives the most painful pinches.
Then Sarah moves in to whisper, “I always did think he was cute. You know, not, like, traditionally cute, but tall, at least. A little too hairy for me, though. But isn’t he still in school? Does he not have a job? How’s he going to support you without a job? Are you going to have to support him? I’m all for being a feminist, but not that feminist. Look what happened to Rose.”
My eyes are still filled with tears from Rose’s pinch. I have to sit down because I can’t see to navigate the living room furniture, which my mother has rearranged to make space for all the floral arrangements that have been arriving. The next thing I know, a sheet of paper is thrust into my hands.
“Here,” a child’s voice says.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“It’s my newspaper.” When my vision clears a little, I see that my niece Maggie is standing in front of me. “That will be one dime, please.”
I reach into my pocket, find some change, and give Maggie a dime. She walks away without saying thank you.
I look down at the sheet of paper. It is printed in sixteen-point type and arranged to look like the front page of an actual newspaper. She’s clearly had someone’s help with it, since, being in the first grade, she’d only just learned to read and write. The headline, which is in twenty-six point, screams, “GRANDMA NICHOLS DIES!!!!”
Below that, the article goes on to describe Gran’s death in grisly detail, with a line about how Elizabeth Nichols is quoted as being “very sad.”
“Now, Lizzie,” Mom says, coming out of the kitchen with Chaz in tow, holding a steaming mug of coffee and a plate of coffee cake. “I wanted to let you know, we’ve selected a reading for you to do at the service this afternoon.”
“A reading?” I look up from the paper. “What kind of reading?”
“Just a passage from the Bible that Father Jim picked out,” Mom goes on as Rose drifts out from the kitchen and takes a seat by the piano. “I’ll get you a copy so you can practice. Each of you girls is doing one.”
“Gran never read the Bible,” I say, “in her life.”
“Well, you can’t have a funeral without Bible readings,” Sarah says.
“And these are very tasteful Bible passages, honey,” Mom says. “Don’t worry.”
“Tasteful Bible passages,” Chaz says, putting his plate of coffee cake down on a side table. When Mom looks at him, he grins and raises his mug of coffee toward her in a salute. “Great coffee, Mrs. Nichols!”
Mom smiles. “Why, thank you, Chaz.”
I’m too miserable to smile. “Mom,” I say. “This funeral… it’s like it doesn’t even have anything to do with Gran. We should be having a celebration of her life. The things in it should represent things she really loved.”