Firecracker (14 page)

I
t wasn't my first time in a bar. My father and my grandfather sometimes had to stop in places like this all around the world for business, so when I went along, I would usually sit in a booth and carve things into the table or bet drunks twenty dollars that they couldn't drink a glass of black pepper, Tabasco sauce, and dishwater. Even if they won, they lost, and those were the best kinds of bets. It wasn't even my first time in that particular bar, but in the daylight it looked sadder than I remembered.

It wasn't hard to miss Randy, despite the fact that it was almost always incredibly easy to miss Randy. That day he was the only one there. If there had been maybe two other people with brown hair in the bar, I might have had to replace Randy with someone else and hope that Lisbet wouldn't be able to tell the difference. A similar plan had once worked with a goldfish that I'd accidentally dropped in the toaster, so I thought it was likely to work again.

“Can I see some ID, miss?” the bartender said. I handed him a fake passport, and he nodded. “That's quite a dress for a Saturday afternoon, Miss Graneveis.”

“If you're not going to go out with style, why the hell go out?” I said.

“What can I get you?”

“She'll have some sort of red sweet juice if you have anything like that,” Randy said. It was the first time I'd ever heard him say anything.

“How did you know what I drink?”

“How wouldn't I? We live in the same house,” he said.

I felt a little bad just then that I hadn't paid as much attention to what Randy drinks. “How long have you been here?” I asked Randy.

“He's been here too goddamn long,” the bartender said.

“Your grandfather said I can stay here as long as I want, so I have a feeling I'm just going to stay here all night and right through the wedding tomorrow, if I feel like it.”

“Today is tomorrow,” I said. “Your wedding is now.”

“What is in this drink?” he asked, looking down at his hands as if he now had four instead of two.

I motioned to the bartender. “Get him some coffee or something, barkeep. Is it cool to call you ‘barkeep'?” He nodded that it was cool and poured Randy a coffee. “Did he say something to you? My grandfather?” I asked Randy. “Did he threaten you?”

“He's been great,” Randy said. “He told me that he knows I have dreams, and he doesn't think anyone should stop me from realizing those dreams.”

“What are your dreams?” I asked, hating myself even as I uttered it. Frankly, I don't even remember what he said. Something about competitive crossword puzzles, soap sculpture, moth collecting, bread making, sports medicine, or maybe animal husbandry. Or it was something else? Who cares?

“What does that have to do with anything?” I asked when he was finished. “Go for it. Live the dream. Husband some animals. You have forever.”

“I don't have forever. After I get married, I'll work for your family's company. And then I'll become just another cog in the machine. It's very sad.”

“That is a little sad. And what did my grandfather have to say about that?”

“He said I didn't have to work there and that I didn't have to get married at all. He said that he would write me a check so I wouldn't marry Lisbet.”

I felt a weird tightness in my chest. And I had a vivid picture in my head of the senator with an unlit cigar laughing at his incredible plan. But I didn't understand it. My whole life, my grandfather and I had understood each other completely. It was almost like we shared a brain, except that my brain had slightly more knowledge about how a computer worked and his had a little more information about fifty-year-old scotch and Lana Turner movies. But I couldn't figure out why he would try to pay Randy to make Lisbet sad. And it made me angry. Not at Randy, but at my grandfather.

“How much money did he offer you?”

“
Lots
,”
he said
.

“So do you want to marry her or not?”

“I don't know,” Randy said. “I'm not sure.” Then he started to cry. It wasn't a dignified, manly, military-funeral cry. It was like a six-year-old girl who'd gotten scratched by a kitten. And then it got worse. Randy put his head on my shoulder and moaned into the ruffles of my dress. By then, I'd had enough. I put the palm of my hand on his forehead and lifted it up.

I don't think Dean Rein would have been very impressed by how I dealt with Randy. He probably would've encouraged me to slowly stroke his hair as he cried on my shoulder. But even in the very kindest part of my being, that wasn't going to happen. What I thought about was my sister, and how if this day didn't end the way she wanted it to end, she wasn't going to be happy. Lisbet wanted this wedding, and she wanted it to be with Randy. I didn't have to understand it. I just had to make sure it happened.

So I said, “Listen, I need to make you aware of something. I don't care about you. I don't care whether you live or die. All I know is that my sister wants to marry you. And if my sister is not married in thirty minutes, you'd better not be interested in having working knees. Are we clear, buddy?”

He sniffed a little. “How do you know what your sister wants? We barely ever see you.”

“I'm . . . I'm working on that.”

“She's not always happy, you know. She gets sad a lot. It's not a very happy house over there.”

“I . . . I know it's not happy over there. Lisbet is unhappy too? Is anybody happy?”

“I don't know.” Randy wasn't looking to run away because he wanted a big check. He just didn't know how to make Lisbet happy for the rest of her life. I had always figured it would take nothing more than a school bus and a box of rainbow sprinkles to make Lisbet happy forever. But maybe I was not the only person in the world who was more complicated than everyone assumed.

“Do you love her?” I asked.

“Sure,” Randy said.

“Sure? Or yes?”

“Yes. I love her very much. I just don't know if now is the right—”

“Get in the goddamn car,” I said. “Because girls tend to have a hard time staying in love with guys who stand them up on their wedding day.”

He looked at me desperately.

“I'm serious.”

“I'm sorry. About all this. The wedding. Lisbet . . .” he whispered. “I really do want to make her happy.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Then get in the car.”

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

My father cried as he watched Lisbet get married. He said to me, “It's times like these when I say to myself, look at these two girls. You and Lisbet. Look at you. I made you. And then you two, you grew up. I guess that's what it's all about. You make people, and they grow up. It's the meaning of life. It's very sad.”

Lisbet never knew that she almost didn't get married. Gretchen distracted her for almost an hour by retying the back of her dress several times and weighing her advice over what kind of bow was the best kind of bow. Then Gretchen, Ms. Antoinette, and Lisbet sang three songs from
The Sound of Music
, and Lisbet lost complete sense of time. Even though I'm writing this down right here, I doubt Lisbet's ever going to read this book and thus she will never know. This book contains no pictures of cute puppies or Junior Jumbles, so it's probably not pertinent to her interests. That's perfectly fine with me. She smiled the whole wedding, and a lot of people took pictures of her, and I know that's the sort of thing that will always be important to Lisbet. When it was time for Lisbet to say
I do
, she said, “I do. I really, really very much do.”

I could tell my grandfather was avoiding me for most of the ceremony. He couldn't get around easily anymore, but amazingly he found a way to wheel to whatever place I was not at all times. I asked Noah what they talked about while I was in the bar, and Noah said, “Nothing really. Mostly about Lyndon Johnson's favorite gentlemen's clubs.” This sounded fairly accurate, though I could tell there was more. Noah just said, “Nope. That's it.” He was a terrible liar. His hands got sweaty when he lied. Or maybe his hands were always sweaty. Or maybe he was always lying.

At eight o'clock, I suggested we leave for the homecoming dance. Most of the really important people had left the wedding (though the secretary of defense was still passed out in the greenhouse). Also, Lisbet's beautiful bridesmaid dress kept poking me in the belly button.

When we got to the end of the driveway where Noah was parked, the senator was there waiting.

“Goodbye,” I said.

He took a long swig from a flask. In it was either bourbon or Pepto-Bismol. He had flasks for both. “You're off?” he wanted to know.

“Yeah.”

“In this car, huh?”

“It would appear that way.”

He took another drink. “I didn't really want to have kids,” he said. “I tried to parent Dirk and Ellery and Martinique. But my heart wasn't really in it, you know.”

I wasn't sure what he was talking about, but I said, “Yes, I know,” because I could tell that wasn't the important part of whatever he was trying to say.

“But I really tried hard with you,” he continued. “Do you remember your alibis?”

I nodded. He was of course referencing how, when I was six years old, he'd told me that I always needed to have a list of alibis handy in case shit ever went down. And—as he pointed out—shit was always going to go down.

“Let me hear them,” he said.

I glanced at Noah. We had to leave, but Noah looked more like he needed to leave the state than he needed to get to the homecoming dance, so I figured we could linger a minute longer. “Okay, fine. First is I was kidnapped by a sex addict. Then, I have an identical twin. Then, I got locked in the car trunk. Also . . . I'm retarded, and I don't know where I am.”

“Right.”

“And you were with me and I was with you. That's all I remember,” I said.

“There were six.”

“But that's all I remember.”

“That's too bad,” he said. “You're missing the most important.” He paused for effect. “The world turned and flung me.”

At age six, I had learned that nobody was ever actually standing still. The world was spinning really, really fast. It seemed perfectly reasonable to me that one day it would slow down a little or speed up, and you might be thrown a few miles and end up in a place you'd never expected to be. It seemed likely.
Sorry, officer, I understand that I was apprehended in that bank vault, but it wasn't my fault. The world turned and flung me.

“Do you know why I tried so hard with you?” my grandfather asked.

“Because you think I'm like you,” I replied.

“Yeah. That's why you were my favorite. Because you were like me. That's what I thought.”

I didn't know if I was supposed to say thank you or leave or what. I said nothing.

“I was wrong,” he said. “You're not like me at all.” He looked beyond me, focusing on some distant point.

“You're drunk,” I told him.

“I'm disappointed,” he said.

“In me?”

“Remember when I said that there are three things you'll be wrong about when you get old?”

“Yeah.” I waited to hear more.

“Well, I know mine now.” I didn't ask him what they were, but I should have. Because he chose that moment to turn his wheelchair around and wheel away. I didn't know it at the time, but I would never be able to ask him again.

“Bye, Astrid,” he called out behind him. “Have fun.”

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

LETTER FROM MONTGOMERY KRIEGER (DATED TWO MONTHS PRIOR)

 

Dear Monkey,

It's your grandpa writing to you. I know you probably don't believe it because this letter is typed on a stupid computer, but my hands have been too damn stiff lately, so that idiot Barry who works for me is going to write down everything I say. And he'd better have written down that he's an idiot when I called him an idiot just now or else he's going to have to look for a new job as soon as he can get his butt out the door. I just checked to make sure he wrote it down, and he did, and that's good.

I'm writing to you today because I told you I would, and you will never get me to write a goddamn email like you asked. A good letter should take two days at least to get to the person or else why don't you just go to them and tell them whatever it is you want to say, right? I've been thinking about you lately for a lot of reasons. Chiefly, it's because I'm sitting here on my butt all the livelong day, and I have nothing to do but think. I'm half blind, so I can't tell the difference between a book and a sandbox at this point, and thinking is the only thing I can do that doesn't require me to move. But the reason I'm thinking about you in particular is because I know that this is your last year at Bristol.