Loose Screws

So I muster every scrap of conviction I can and say, “I’m going alone, and that’s that,” and my mother gives one of those long-suffering sighs that daughters the world over dread, then says, “Okay, fine, fine…” which of course means it isn’t fine, but she’ll deal with it. For a moment I savor the small, exquisitely precious victory. Only then she says, “You know, it’s not as if I’m going to embarrass you or anything.”

If I had the energy, I’d laugh.

“So,” she says, as if my not refuting her comment doesn’t matter, “when are you leaving?”

I hedge. “Elevenish.” My heart starts thundering in my chest. I open the freezer, find three Healthy Choice dinners, a half-filled ice cube tray, and one lone Häagen-Dazs bar. With nuts. “Maybe.” I rip off the paper, sighing at the sensation of creamy chocolate exploding in my mouth. Yes, I know it’s barely 9:00 a.m. So? “I’m not sure.” Which of course is a bold-faced lie, since if Phyllis is meeting me, obviously I can’t just mosey on up there whenever the mood strikes.

“Call me when you get back,” Nedra says, and I say “Sure,” although we both know I won’t.

I hang up and sigh, relieved to have my thoughts to myself again, hating having my thoughts to myself again. God, this is so creepy, this walking-a-tightrope-over-Niagara-Falls-in-a-dense-fog feeling. I keep thinking, if I just keep still, don’t rush things, the real Ginger will come back to play. The real Ginger will come back to life.

I’ve turned into an absolute slug. I’ve spent most of the past week on the sofa in my pj’s, scarfing down Chee

tos and Häagen-Dazs and cherry Cokes whilst staring zombie-fashion at the soaps. And then there’s Sally Jesse, and Oprah, and all those morbidly fascinating court TV shows. Criminy, where do they get these people? From a cold storage locker in Area 51?

Munching away on the ice cream bar, I gaze at the wedding dress, still lolling in the middle of the floor like a wilted magnolia. I have no idea what to do with it. I can’t exactly throw it out, I certainly can’t see packing it away as a keepsake, or giving something with this much bad karma to someone else. So there it sits. With any luck the silk will eventually biodegrade, leaving behind a small, neat pile of satin-covered buttons I can just bury or something.

The tulle snags on my leg stubble as I shuffle through the dress on my way to the sofa. Guess I should shave.

Guess I should bathe.

I sink onto the sofa—my only concession to “cleaning” has been to push the bed back into the sofa sometime during the day—my mouth full of melting chocolate and ice cream. I am one miserable chick, lemme tell ya. What’s weird though, is that I actually felt better a few days ago than I do now. There was a period there—

Okay, wait. Let’s back up and I’ll fill you in.

The day after the wedding is a total loss. Whoever said champagne doesn’t give you a hangover lied. By the following day, however, I had recovered enough to face my kitchen, as well as my phone, which, when I finally got up the nerve to check, was up to twenty-five messages. A new world’s record. (I’d turned my cell ringer off, too. I figured the world could do without me for a couple days.) Gathering the tatters of my courage—and Ted’s fabulous lemon poppyseed bundt cake—I plopped my fanny up on my bar stool and pressed the play button.

The first thirteen messages, as I’d suspected, were all basically variations on the “Are you okay? Call me” theme from my mother. Then:

“Hey, Ginger, it’s Nick. Just checkin’ in, see if you heard anything. Let me know.”

“Nick.” Not “Nicky.” Got it. I also got something else, a genuine concern that wasn’t at all sexual in nature. No, really. He was family, after all, in a peripheral kind of way. And once sober, I realized my reaction to him had been due to nothing more than booze and shock. Besides, the last time I talked to Paula, she told me Nicky—Nick—had a new girlfriend, she’d met her once, she was okay but for God’s sake this was like the sixth one this year and God knew she thought the world of her brother-in-law, but when the hell was he planning on growing up, already?

Another three messages from my mother, then:

“Girl, pick up the damn phone!” Terrie. “Come on, come on…damn. I know you’re in there, probably cryin’ your eyes out, which is a shame ’cause the sorry skank ain’t worth it….”

One thing I’ll say for Terrie—there won’t be any “there are other fish in the sea” pep talks from that quarter, since as far as she’s concerned, the only thing that happens when you take fish out of the water is they start to stink.

“Okay, I guess this means you’re either sittin’ there not answering or you’ve turned off your ringer. I don’t suppose I blame you. But you just remember, if you hear this anytime in the next decade, that this is NOT your fault. Okay, baby—you give me a call when you return to the land of the living, we’ll go out and par-tay.”

Uh-huh. At that moment I’d been feeling a strong affinity with Mrs. Krupcek in 5-B who, legend has it, got stuck in the elevator for two hours one day back in the eighties when the building lost electricity and consequently peed all over herself. Nobody’s seen her leave the building since.

I haven’t called her back yet. Terrie, I mean, not Mrs. Krupcek. But Terrie will understand. I hope.

“Uh, yeah?” the next message started. “It’s Tony from Blockbuster?” At the time, I wondered which he wasn’t sure about, that his name was Tony or that he was from Blockbuster. “I’m just calling to let you know that Death in Venice is five days overdue? Okay, ’bye.”

First thought: Who the hell rented Death in Venice?

Second thought: There’s a video in here somewhere?

“Hi, honey, it’s Shelby. Are you there? Okay, I guess not. Anyway, Mark and I thought maybe you might like to come over for dinner one night this week? The kids have been asking about you. Well, okay. Love you. ’Bye.”

To answer your question, no, I didn’t accept her invitation. Although I did eventually call her back and thank her. But God knows the last thing I need right now is to spend an evening with Ozzie and Harriet Bernstein. Maybe next month. Or something.

I shoveled another bite of cake into my mouth, then:

“Hey, Ginge—”

The fork went flying as I grabbed for the phone at the sound of Greg’s voice, totally forgetting it was a message, stupid.

“…I heard via the grapevine that my father went off the deep end and called in the authorities, so I figured I’d better let everybody know I’m okay. I just couldn’t…” I heard him sigh. “Damn, there’s no easy way to do this…”

Now you have to remember that, up to this point, I had convinced myself the guy was either dead, kidnapped, or had an otherwise perfectly reasonable explanation for his vanishing act. When it was immediately obvious the first option was moot, and the second was highly doubtful—this was not someone who sounded as if a gun was being held to his head—that left me with Door Number Three. Which wasn’t looking promising, either.

“…I know you’re probably angry—okay, extremely angry.”

Yeah, okay, I’d been that a time or two in the past forty-eight hours.

“…and you have every right to be. What I did was unforgivable, and if I live to be a hundred, I’ll never completely understand why I bolted like that. No, no…that’s not entirely true. I guess I…um…panicked. About us, about getting married, about the way you’d set me up on some sort of pedestal—”

I choke on my cake.

“—and I realized I hadn’t taken the time I needed to think this through…”

By that point, my ire was beginning to perk quite nicely. I mean, hey—there was some reason why he couldn’t have arrived at this conclusion before I spent my entire life’s savings on food that nobody ever got to eat?

And what is this I set him up on some sort of pedestal crap?

“…I mean, I really didn’t see this coming, so I don’t want you to think this was all a game or anything like that. But…God, Ginge, I’m slime.”

No argument there.

“…my main regret is that I didn’t realize how I felt until I was getting ready to leave the house on Saturday. I guess I’d just gotten so caught up in…everything, I didn’t take five minutes to ask myself if I was really ready for this…”

The man is thirty-five frickin’ years old, for God’s sake. When did he think he would be ready?

“…I mean, the sex was great, wasn’t it?”

I looked over at my coffee table and sighed.

“…and who knew my parents would file a missing person’s report, for chrissake? I mean, I hope that didn’t cause you any more distress…”

Oh, no. Not at all.

“…and I hope maybe one day, we can be friends again, although I’ll completely understand if you hate my guts.”

You think?