“I think they're in love,” Barbara said, referring to Rachel and Cortland, who were a good three minutes late according to my father's watch. “Wouldn't that be lovely to have a spring wedding? Is it too soon? Oh, certainly not. It's not like a second wedding would be an elaborate affair. Now that Rachel's famous, do you think they'll cover their wedding in the society section? I bet Austin Living will want a cover story! Do you think the governor will come?”
I let my mom go on and on about her own fantasy while I prepped the tenderloin for the oven. Dad and da Vinci were in the backyard tossing the football with Bradley while William stayed on the patio playing Sudoku. I glanced at them every few minutes to make sure nothing mischievous was going on. (As if I could tell if they were talking about sex.)
When Cortland and Rachel arrived (now fourteen minutes late), my mother went on as if she hadn't seen them in ages. It might make some people feel good to be greeted like those at the airport with the signs and the tears and high-pitched sentiments, but it just made me feel sad. Grievers need more than a cheerleading section to feel good about reunions when you know the one person you truly wish to be reunited with can never happen.
Cortland surprised me, planting a kiss on my cheek and hugging me tightly.
“Oh,” I said, patting his broad shoulders. “Yes. Good to see you, too. Wow, this is festive, right?”
“Where's the birthday boy?” Rachel said, practically doing cartwheels on her way to reach Dad.
Zoe shook her head and shrugged. “He's not a boy, he's a man,” she pointed out. “But whatever.”
I winked at Zoe and she helped me whip the mashed potatoes in the kitchen. She only got a home-cooked meal when she visited me or her grandma, so helping in the kitchen was her favorite thing. And to think, she didn't have to wear makeup or sequins to get the attention she so craved.
As we were seated around the dining room table set for nine (squishing in a chair for Zoe), I could feel the palpable presence of Joel in the room. I'm not sure if it's because we were surrounded by the Halloween decorations he had so carefully hung each year or because I simply couldn't get him off of my mind.
Both Cortland and da Vinci pulled my chair out for me, one on each side, and da Vinci stiffened as though only he had the right to do so for his lady. As was ritual, Noble began the prayer and we all followed suit. Afterward, forks clanked and my mother began to take a sip of her wine, but holding it in the air, said, “I'm so glad you two are friends.”
Da Vinci nodded, lifting his wine glass to propose a toast. “To friends and lovers,” he said.
And the rest of us awkwardly joined in while my family members eyeballed me. I would shrug it off as an Italian thing. They wouldn't know the difference.
“To friends and lovers,” Cortland said, the one among them who might know the difference.
Zoe piped up, “To friends and lovers.”
My boys glanced over and I gave a quick shake, a silent signal for them to stay out of the toast.
My father added, “Hear, hear,” and we clinked glasses and began an otherwise normal meal except for the question mark hanging above us like a chandelier: “Who exactly among us are friends, and who are lovers?”
“No problem,” Rachel said as she stuffed my family videos into her oversized bag after dinner with the promise she would have her editing team transfer the outdated formats onto DVDs, as well as host them on a server.
“I'll give you the photo discs as soon as I print them out,” I told her, hesitant to hand over so many pieces of my and Joel's life together at once. After all, Rachel wasn't known for her organizational skills, and she had lost too many of my things over the years to keep track.
“Ooh, I know!” Rachel said, snapping her fingers together. Her bright ideas always arrived with a thunderclap. “Why don't you, me, and Mom have a scrapbooking party?”
I shrugged, internally cringing at the thought of a) spending the day cutting out construction paper with my sister who would be filling her book with more pageant pictures while I laid out my soul with the last pictures of Joel, and b) ever finding the time to do something so crafty and creative.
“You know you can do scrapbooks online now,” Cortland said, and Rachel beamed at him as if he were a brilliant anesthesiologist, which I'm sure he was.
“What do you mean?” I asked, intrigued.
“Well, since you already have your digital photos on your computer, you can go to a web site where they have design templates, and you just drag and drop your photos onto the pages and order it and they'll ship it to you.”
“Are you serious?” Rachel gasped. “And here I've been spending all that money on glitter and fancy stickers for Zoe's books.”
“I'm not very technically inclined,” I told him, embarrassed to admit I barely knew how to use e-mail, let alone do something important on the web.
“If you have time, I could show you now.”
Rachel shrugged. “Oh, she has oodles of time. I'm going to go out back and talk to the birthday boy. When you two are done, I'll bring out the cake. Think Daddy will mind I had the baker put sixty-nine candles on the cake?”
“Better than the numeral kind,” I said, recalling one of my mother's most embarrassing moments; it was when Rachel was in junior high and I was in sixth grade and Rachel asked Mom and Dad at the dinner table what it meant to “69” someone. Besides choking on her chicken, Mother did nothing to satisfy Rachel's curiosity, so Rachel did what most junior high girls would do and went to her girlfriends, who had asked older siblings what it meant.
“God, Mom's such a prude,” Rachel said. “And speaking of, I want to hear more about the whole ‘friends and lovers‘ thing when we're not in mixed company.”
Cortland raised a brow, but before he could excuse himself, she turned on her heels, leaving us in the kitchen alone, her last statement still hanging in the air, but I was unwilling to respond to it.
“It's really none of my business,” Cortland said, and I swatted the air where she'd left it.
“Nor hers,” I added, and we went into Joel's office, which I couldn't stop referring to as Joel's office, probably because I only used it when trying and failing to e-mail his ex-girlfriend. He hadn't spent much time there, as he preferred his garage studio with the drafting table.
I pulled up the pictures, willing myself not to cry, then let Cortland pull up the web site memorybook.com, where I selected a simple design with photo edges and creamy backgrounds.
“Nice choice,” Cortland said. “Now you just have to decide what cover shot you want to use.”
I sifted through hundreds of photos, amazed that I didn't mind Cortland sharing the moment, but I couldn't decide which was cover-worthy because every one featuring Joel felt cover-worthy to me, even the ones where he had devil-red eyes or where his head had been lopped off due to a bad camera operator (me).
“Here, we can fix those red eyes,” Cortland said, taking over the mouse, blowing up Joel's picture until it filled the frame to life-size. How had I forgotten about that tiny mole on his left cheek or the way his five o'clock shadow grew in faster on his chin than the rest of his face or how the corner of his eyelids rose when he smiled?
And his eyes! Flecked with gold and brown and green, and even the blue of the ocean was in there. When Cortland removed the red eye, Joel looked nearly perfect, lopsided grin and all. I had to look away. I swallowed hard, then realized with surprise that what I felt right then was not grief, but love. For the first time when I viewed Joel's picture, I didn't feel sad at all, but simply happy to see him. Greetings-in-an-airport sort of happy.
“You okay?” Cortland asked, putting his arm lightly around my shoulder, and I nodded.
“I want the picture of the four of us at the beach in Galveston for the cover,” I said. “Then I'll just go from there in chronological order. They all have to go in. This might take me weeks.”