“Ashley, for God’s sake.” I sat up. “I understand you weren’t in the mood for their input, but they’re my family, flawed or not, and I’m not going to sit here and trash them to make you feel better. I’m just not.” It sounded like Lewis was growing a spine, finally, right there in the Chevette.
I expected lightning to flash, stars to fall from the sky, the earth to shake and rumble at its core, but instead I heard only the slam of the car door and Ashley saying, “Then there is nothing left to discuss. I don’t want to be with you right now, Lewis. I don’t know when, actually, I’ll want to be with you again.”
“Ashley.” And there it was, just as she was coming up the walk, the plaintive whine: Lewis lost his new bravado and returned to his old self. But it was too late. Ashley was In A Mood and he’d have to ride it out, like it or not, like the rest of us always did.
She came stomping up the steps, saw me, and stopped just long enough to shoot me a look. She was wearing the holy dress, and in the porch light she seemed to be almost glowing. She kicked her shoes to the far end of the porch and climbed into the swing, making quite a racket as the chains clanked before settling into a nice, smooth to and fro. Lewis was still out in the driveway, waiting in the car.
“What happened?” I asked after a few solid minutes of her heavy sighs overlaying the occasional yap of the Weavers’ dog from across the street, a fat little sausage of a dog that had a bark like a duck. There was something wrong with it, some kind of vocal problem. My father had called it Duckdog, upsetting Mrs. Weaver, who liked to dress it in sweaters, galoshes when it rained.
Ashley leaned further back in the swing and waited awhile before answering, like she wasn’t sure it was worth the trouble. “They hate me,” she said simply. “They all ganged up on me when we started talking about the caterer and they all hate me.”
The Chevette started up now, softly, and I wondered if Lewis was actually going to leave. I’d imagined him sitting all night in the driveway, sleeping upright rather than leaving angry. But there he was, pulling into the street with one last long pause in front of the house before driving off.
“I’m sure they don’t hate you,” I said, sounding just like my mother, who was too busy dancing with middle-aged men at the Holiday Inn to be here for this latest crisis.
“All I said was that I hadn’t felt like arguing with the caterer about salmon. If it was going to be that much trouble, we’d have chicken. I mean, by this point I have to pick my battles, right? But with just the mention of the salmon issue the whole table looks at me and Mrs. Warsher says, ‘If you wanted salmon, you should have pursued it. The caterer is working for you, not the other way around.”’ Her voice was high and nasal, spiteful. She still had it in her.
“You fought with his family about salmon?” Now that I knew the core of the dispute was fish, it seemed less exciting. I’d expected something major, something involving sex or religion at least.
“Oh, not just salmon. Lewis decided to tell them about Carol, too. Oh, and the invitations and how the typesetter forgot to put the date the first time around. And that’s not even counting what he said about Daddy.”
“Daddy. What about him?”
“Well, they asked”—she waved her hand around in summary as if it would take too long to explain—“about the family and all, and Lewis tells them about the divorce, which is fine, but then he has to go into the whole Lorna thing, and the TV station thing and how she’s a weathergirl and Dad’s a sportscaster and on and on and on. It was just too much.”
“Well, Ash, it is the truth,” I said. “Embarrassing or not.”
“But he made it sound so awful. I mean, there’s Lewis’s whole family all grouped around the table like the Waltons and he’s telling them about Daddy and Lorna and I can only imagine what they’d think if they knew Mom was out dancing with Lydia Catrell. I mean, these people go to church, Haven.”
“So? It doesn’t make them better than you.”
She sighed, blowing hot air through her bangs. “You don’t understand. You don’t have anyone you have to impress now. It’s different when you’re older. What your family does reflects on you a lot more, especially when it’s as twisted as ours is.”
“A lot of people get divorced, Ash,” I said. “It’s not just us.”
She climbed out of the swing, leaving it to rock empty behind her. She leaned far over the edge of the rail and balanced her weight on her palms while the holy dress, translucent, blew around her legs. Her hair hung down over her face, hiding her mouth as she said, “I know, Haven. But no one else has our parents.”
A car blew by on the street, radio blasting; a cigarette hit the pavement with a shower of sparks. Then it was quiet again, except for Duckdog’s barking.
“I saw Sumner tonight,” I said quietly.
“Who?” She was still leaning over, her feet dangling.
“Sumner.”
“Sumner Lee?”
“Yeah.”
A pause; then she righted herself and brushed her hair back. “Really. What’d he say?”
“We just caught up for a while. He asked about you.”
“Did he.” Her voice was flat. “Well. That’s nice.”