“It’s our pleasure,” Jonathan Bryant said, swooping in out of nowhere and shaking hands all around, exchanging names and pleasantries and nice to see yous/nice to finally meet yous/we love your butters (that one was for Oscar) and everything else. Archie took the moment to lean down and whisper, “You were saying something about a headache?”
I knew this was my out, my chance to slip away and feign a migraine and spend the afternoon either in my room or hiking in the hills. Or running. It was literally my chance to run. I took a deep breath, prepared to duck and dodge, but as I looked around at the assembled group, I really looked. My best friends in the whole world, with their one and onlys. And in Roxie’s case, her one and only’s plus one. My new friends Chad and Logan. The man who hired me, a lovely fatherly figure who loved a Jell-O mold as much as the old biddies and was already pointing out to Polly which one was his favorite. And Archie.
A man who wore tortoiseshell glasses and a bunny pocket square like no one else on the planet. A man who was currently looking down at me with the nicest and sweetest eyes ever, full of concern but also tinged with hope that I’d be okay and stay. For the buns.
I could do this, right? It was just a meal, it was just food. Just time spent with friends, what was I worrying about so much? I could do this. I needed to do this. And if there was ever a time to just get over myself and deal, it was right now. “I’m good,” I said, and boy, did I ever want those words to be true. Then I saw how happy my words made him, the smile coming over his face so quickly. “I’m good,” I repeated. Saying the words actually pushed that panic ball down a bit, slipping backward down my spine, the tendrils that had been spreading out and wrapping around me seemed to be recoiling back down to where it was manageable. “I’m good,” I said once more.
Ohhh, I was so very not good. Brunch was coordinated chaos. Not in the overall dining room but at our actual table. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, everyone was talking over one another, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t focus, I didn’t even know who was talking half the time.
“Cadbury Creme Eggs.”
“Gross.”
“Gross? Leave this table right now for such blasphemy.”
“Creme Eggs fall under the category of blasphemy now?”
“If you’re talking smack about them, they do.”
“Forget the Creme Eggs, you can’t have Easter without Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs.”
“YES! Oh my God, this, this a thousand percent. Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs are the best!”
“My mom always made sure I had tons of those in my basket.”
“A basket covered in ribbons, right?”
“Totally! And full of that plastic green grass.”
“Plastic green grass! Oh my God, I haven’t seen that stuff in ages! You’d go to grab a piece of candy—”
“—and half of the grass would come with it!”
“My mom used to make a kind of nest out of that green plastic grass in the middle of our dining room table and put a huge chocolate bunny in the middle, then scatter jelly beans all around. And Peeps.”
“PEEPS!”
“YES, PEEPS!”
“How in the world have we not talked about Peeps yet?”
“Did your mom ever let you put them in the microwave?”
“No way, she knew I’d burn the house down.”
“My mom would never let me do it, but at some point when she wasn’t around my Dad and I would sneak over to the microwave and blow up the Peeps.”
“My mom would’ve killed me. Besides, we were too busy shoving Cadbury Creme Eggs in our mouths to worry about bullshit candy like Peeps.”
“I told my mom I was having Easter brunch at Bryant Mountain House, and she made me promise to smuggle out some of the hot cross buns inside a napkin. Think anyone will notice if I do?”
“I could always get you a pan right out of the kitchen, would that be enough?”
“Maybe? Two, two pans would be enough.”
“New tradition: we have Easter brunch together up here every year.”
“I second that.”
“I third that. More buns, please.”
“Deal. Every year. All of us together. Now, someone please pass me more of that Jell-O mold before we all turn into a pile of mush.”
“I have to go.”
“What?”
“What?”
“What’d she say?”
“Yeah, I gotta go. I’m not . . . feeling well.”
“No no, don’t go.”
“She’s not feeling well?”
“Clara.”
“I gotta go.”
Chapter 15
I thought about what Roxie and Natalie had said all day. That it wasn’t perfect for them, that it was sticky and messy and crazy, but at a certain point they just gave up and gave in. There was a part of me that wanted to give in.
So give in.
Brunch just proved I couldn’t. Full of talk of family and tradition and shared memories and common ground. People take for granted the primer that runs like a baseline throughout much of your modern American family. Half the people at the table didn’t know one another a year ago, and yet they all had a similar background, a shorthand when thinking back on their collective childhood and how it just was. I didn’t have that. I didn’t have half of that.
So they were planning on brunch again together next year. Same time, same place. The idea of this, just the casualness of people making plans without a care in the world. If someone couldn’t make it, eh. No biggie. If Natalie and Oscar decided to spend their holiday in Manhattan with her family instead, no biggie. Plans change, one sweet family vignette can easily be swapped out with another because most people have Norman Fucking Rockwell on tap, ready to serve up at a moment’s notice.
Plans get changed. And sometimes people get left out and left behind and forgotten without a second thought. But if you didn’t make those plans, see, and you kept it all loose and free and no commitments, no ties, no binds . . . well then. You were the only person who had the power to break your heart.
I was the only one who could break my heart.
I sat on my balcony for hours, ignoring the texts I knew were pouring in from Roxie and Natalie, just rocking in my chair, watching the lake, relishing the outside. The air was cool, gentle, soft. Outside. I could hear owls calling to each other, the soft lap of the waves rocking the dock below, the wind in trees wearing their new spring green. Outside. The night sky was clear, a thousand stars twinkling down on this Easter Sunday. Outside.
It was easier on the outside.
I heard the knocking on my door, but I ignored it. It came once, twice, then three times, each time a little harder and more insistent. I ignored them all. Things were cracking open wide, and I needed the space outside to handle it.
But when I heard my front door open, and I heard footsteps walking across the floor inside, I knew who it was.
“Not a good time right now,” I said, my voice sounding gruff and scratchy even to me.
“You don’t have a headache, do you?” he asked. From inside.
“No,” I answered. From outside.
“I’d love to know what’s going on in that beautiful head of yours,” he said. Inside.