Works and Days
Surprise
Part One
Jaclyn Lewis screamed, nearly dropping her water bottle.
“You said never knock,” John said, shrugging while Jackie took a few breaths, and tried to laugh.
“I’ll get some paper towels for that spill,” John went to the kitchen area. He came back with his paper towels and an expectant look on his face. “You said you needed to talk to me.”
“Yes.”
“:About what?” John was wiping up the water from the floor and looking up at Jackie.
“About. About... I was talking to my sister and she gave me some good advice.”
“Kristin? And she gave you good advice?” John rose to throw the towels away.
“Yeah, I know,” Jackie shrugged. “And the bottom line is we need to talk about... everything. So, sit down, alright?”
John nodded.
“Alright.”
“And so I’m sorry for hitting you in the face.”
“You probably should have done it a long time ago. About six years ago.”
John sat beside Jackie on the couch, his knees apart, his clasped hands between them. “Awe, Jackie, I was stupid. I knew, but I never knew I just.... I’m not intuitive and all that. You’ve got to tell me stuff. You’ve got to spell things out for me. I—I love you. That’s why I did what I did. Jackie, if I could do it over again, then I would say—”
“Yes.”
John stopped, looked puzzled, and stared at Jackie.
“What?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll marry you.”
John was quiet for a moment, and then he said.
“Well, that was simple.”
“Sometimes things are.”
“Not very romantic,” John commented.
“Are you disappointed?”
“Yes,” John said truthfully. “A little bit.”
Jackie looked thoughtful for a second, then she lifted a finger, rolled off the couch, and walked to the kitchen. She was rummaging through drawers and John heard the squeal and squeak of the door to the breadbox, and then a few seconds later, Jackie came back smiling.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“For?”
Jackie didn’t answer. She got down on one knee and held out a circle made of a bread twist tie.
“John Francis Mc.Larchlahn, Would you like to be my husband?”
John looked suitably touched. He blushed a little and then touched Jackie’s cheek and said, “Can I get back to you on that?”
“Don’t make me hit you again.”
“I meant, yes, Jaclyn. Yes.”
Soon after, Faye Mathisson returned. She had choice words to say about Ted Weirbach, but when Chayne pointed out that she had essentially done the same thing to Chuck Shrader, she immediately turned to Chuck who had been tongue tied the whole night and said, “Should we get together?” And so they became a couple.
Faye and Chuck would have to live in the world of the long distance relationship, and Chayne imagined he must have been in something like that. Ted called once a week. There was no need for more than once a week. They had been lovers who were just getting to love each other. Chayne privately wondered if what they had was strong enough to warrant being called a long distance relationship, especially when he paid far too much attention to the way Robert Keyes always had the coffee ready, or always finished the sentences he started, or always wore those white pants or the baggy jeans that shaped his round ass and suggested that he might not be wearing underwear.
Robert Keyes, his twinkling eyes, his little smile, delighted Chayne these days. He was sure it was Rob that kept Ted from his mind, or heart, and that in time he could turn over a new leaf and lead some type of celibate life. Then, one night, Faye, Shannon and Jewell took him to the Blue Jewel, and on the second margarita, when he was feeling expansive, he saw for the first time in a long time, Cowboy Dan, and Cowboy Dan asked, shyly, “What are you doing after this?”
He’d bought Chayne a shot, and Chayne downed it and felt his whole body flooded with the old familiar heat.
“You,” he answered.
Several things happened the third week in May. Chayne Kandzierski’s surprise birthday party was planned, Jaclyn Lewis’s wedding was planned, it was observed that the two would feature the same guests and be back to back and everyone decided that was fine. On the outskirts of town, Tim Emery, Jewell’s long tall husband, learned that his uncle Pritchard has slipped hanging something in the spare room, and then it had been decided that what he had been hanging was himself.
“He’s in a better place,” Chayne told his old friend, embracing him. He hated platitudes except for now and again there was a time for platitudes and so he said this and Tim kept clapping him on the back with his large hands and saying, “Thank you, Chayne. Thank you. But I wanna know. I really wanna know.”
Jewell stopped herself from saying, “What can you know?”
But Tim said, “I need to go talk to a priest. I’m going to go talk to those priests at your church, Chayne.”
“They’re kind of idiots,” Chayne said.
“Still,” Tim said, soberly, “they’re God’s idiots, so that must count for something.”
“And then Geoff and I’ll come up, me behind Geoff, and the whole procession,” Robert Heinz informed Jackie and John as the three of them stood near the entrance of Saint Adjeanet’s in the middle of the day, looking up the aisle.
“And then the Wedding Song will start, Jaclyn, and you’ll take long strides like this.”
The tall priest folded his hands over his stomach, and began to stride down the aisle. “And then when you get here,” Robert Heinz stopped at the first pew where Kathleen was sitting beside Patti, “John—Kathleen, you be John, and I’ll be Jackie— comes out, and the two of you link arms and come before the altar—”
“And then kneel like Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music!” cried Abby Devalara.
“Just so,” Father Robert agreed, smiling. He raised an eyebrow toward Jackie, “That is the way you wanted it, right, Jaclyn?”
“That’s just the way,” Jaclyn nodded. “And Chayne’ll conduct the choir in three hymns before you and Father Geoff come in to ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desire’?”
“Right,” Robert nodded.
“And then silence,” Jaclyn said. “And then the Wedding Song from The Marriage of Figaro with me,” she looked at John, “coming to you. How many flowers, Ma?”
“I think we cleaned out the florists.”
“And doves. We’re getting doves! Patti, remember when you and Thom got married?”
Patti nodded, amused, “Vaguely.”
“That is the penultimate wedding to me,” Jackie said. “I never thought I’d have my wedding. Let alone here. At Saint Addy’s. Why didn’t you and Thom get married here?”
“That’s not even what penultimate means—” Felice began, but Patti answered:
“Thom thought it was best we get married at a church that meant something to both of us. Hence, the Basilica. But I don’t think it was the Basilica back then. I think it was just the Church of the Sacred Heart.”
“Oh!” Jackie couldn’t decide whose hand to grasp. She grasped John’s, then Kathleen’s, then Patti’s then Robert Heinz’s. “This will be the most perfect wedding ever!”
When they had left the house and met Russell, he asked, “Rob, why are you in the back?”
“So you can sit next to Chayne.”
“That’s silly. I’m sixteen. You’re grown. Get up,” Russell said.
He sat beside Anigel who was sprawled in the back and said she liked it.
“Next stop Gilead?” Russell said. “Or is he at Chayne’s house?”
“He’s not even in town,” Chayne said as he resumed driving.
“Rob,” Chayne said, slapping his knee, “it’s good to have you up here.”
Rob grinned almost foolishly and said, “It’s good to be up her.e.”
“You know it’s just a passenger seat?” Chayne said because Rob was grinning so hard, and yet he was grinning too. Rob Keyes always made him smile, since the day he had come into this house. The moment his mother had brought the sunny young man through the door, Chayne had decided he should stay.
“You wanna drive?” Chayne offered.
“Really?”
“Don’t get excited. I hate driving.”
The two of them clambered over each other switching seats, and they felt each other up a little too much, or if it would have been quicker and simpler to simply climb out of the car and exchange sides, neither of them suggested. Chayne felt strangely merry after the clambering around the twenty three year old in his white pants and dress shirt, and he could smell Rob’s cologne on him. He hardly heard Rob talking now.
“Why are they throwing you a party if you don’t even like parties?” Rob asked, taking the wheel.
“Because people are kind of asses,” Chayne answered.
Anigel cackled, but Rob made a noise low in his throat.
“I think you’re right.”
“Well,” Chayne said as they stopped at the red light on Reynolds, “where are you guys taking me for dinner?”
Due to being held up by Tim Emery, Geoff Ford was one of the last to reach 1421 Curtain.
“We thought you’d never get here,” Ann said, from her ladder where Diggs was feeding her red and silver garland.
“Are you sure, Father?” Tim Emery was asking, and Father Geoff said, “Yeah, of course,” while Tim Emery went from worried to smiling.
“It’s almost time to turn out the lights,” Sharon said.
“I thought you and Graham were supposed to be taking Chayne out.”
“We were,” said Sharon. “But Robert and Russell stepped up to do it, and that gave us more time so,” Sharon shrugged.
“Thirty-six. If he’s old, does that make me old?”
“Chayne’s not old,” Father Geoff insisted, more to encourage himself—since Chayne was only about four months older than him.
“You know, we should have invited Father Robert,” Diggs said as Ann climbed down the ladder to him.
Geoff Ford shot his sister a look that Diggs missed.
Felice was saying, “Where’s Jackie? John and Jackie were supposed to be here, weren’t they?”
“Jackie said she had to rest or something,” said Patti. “And that’s good. All the Lewises and all the Mc.Larchlahn’s coming in tomorrow! I’m not pregnant on the eve of my wedding, and I still need my rest just thinking about it.”
“Don’t worry,” Thom gave his wife a pat on the rump, “I’ll make it up to you.”
“I bet you will,” Patti raised an eyebrow and Felice barked, “Com’on people.”
“Oh, com on you, Felice!” Mickey Wynn said from the kitchen where he and LaVelle were finishing off the last of the food. “It’s good to see other married people gettin’ it on. Good to know the flavah—” he splashed some paprika across the macaroni— “Ain’t dead yeah.”
“No, no,” Patti said, quietly, pasting the last Happy Birthday sign over the kitchen doorway. “The flavor’s very much alive.”
“If ye have not salt within you,” murmured Mickey.
“I love it when you misquote scripture to talk about sex,” LaVelle drawled.
Shannon’s car pulled up beside them. Her big hair scarcely hid a short man in a large white cowboy hat.
“He, Shan! Who’s the stranger?”
“Pleased to meet you,” the mustachioed cowboy saluted them, unable to tip his hat.
“My cousin Bubba from out in Texas. He’s here for the weekend. Are you guys on your way to the thing now?” she demanded.
“To the surprise party?” Chayne asked.
Rob, who was driving, said, “Wait, it’s supposed to be a surprise party?”
“Yeah,” Chayne looked at him.
“Then why aren’t you surprised?”
Russell shrugged from the backseat. “He’s amazing, isn’t he?”
Anigel said, “I have to admit he is.”
“I certainly hope,” Bubba continued, “that you don’t mind me crashing your party on this fine Shabbos.”
“Not at all,” Chayne said. “Shalom.”
“Shalom indeed.”
Russell always forgot Shannon was Jewish, and certainly never pictured her celebrating any kind of Sabbath.
Chayne was silent, then let out a long almost painful sigh and shouted.
“You alright?” Russell asked.
“Bubba,” Chayne continued to address, Shannon’s cousin, “you must know I usually hate parties. We’ll go, though. I can’t not go. Turn the hearse around!”
“You know what?” Rob smiled like a fox at Chayne, “if they want a surprise, let’s give em a surprise.”
“Whaddo you mean?” Chayne looked at him.
“I’ll show you,” Rob laughed, and in the middle of More Street did a U-turn.
TOMORROW: PART TWO