“Not tonight, apparently.”
“That’s so fucking cool.”
Carver swallowed, feeling sobered. His lips felt numb. “Look, I’m going back to this stupid wedding,” he said, walking away while he still had the nerve. “I’m gonna go say goodnight to everyone, and I’m gonna go home and go to sleep, and if we need to talk more then we can do it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?”
Scott was quiet. Carver wheeled around and faced him, walking backwards. “Is it?”
“Yeah,” Scott said. “Yeah. We are gonna need to talk, but yeah, tomorrow is fine.”
“I actually don’t have to talk to you ever again, just so you’re aware.”
Scott shrugged so hugely that Carver could see it even in the dim light. “Sure,” he said. “Yeah, give it a try.”
Carver gave him two middle fingers and turned back around. He started taking longer strides, desperate to return to the wedding. He was irrationally convinced that if he could just get back inside the reception hall, the world would be put back on its axis. Of course, he’d been trying this trick his entire life, hadn’t he? Just get into the good college, just get the job, just get the wife, the car, the duplex. This time, though, he wasn’t trying to claw his way to the happiness that had always eluded him, he was just trying to get back into the life he’d had before this weekend. He knew he’d hated it, yet he was convinced he may have taken it for granted in all its sedate predictability.
As he got closer, he saw a small figure walking toward him, and he stiffened with fear. It would make sense for Lillian to have followed him out here, but this person was too small to be Lillian. It was a woman, someone wearing a dress, with a purposeful stride he thought he recognized. Closer and closer now, the two of them coming at each other like riders across a desert, Carver’s heart pounding.
It was his mother.
“Mom,” he said, stopping short.
Nora did not stop, she kept coming. She walked right up to him and stood in his way, her face set hard in fear and revulsion. This was the exact expression he’d been afraid of receiving his entire life. He didn’t know what to do with his hands.
“Why, uh,” he said. “What’s —”
“I heard most of that,” she said.
Carver closed his eyes. Okay, so it was over. It had been a good run. Something like twenty-five years of doing his damndest not to let on. Half of him was certain they had alwaysknown, anyway, but the other half of him was grief-stricken and wanted to fall to his knees begging her forgiveness.
Neither half determined his reaction, which was to snap in a sudden rage: “Why the fuck did you follow me out here?”
Nora reeled like he’d shot her. “Excuse me?”
“That was a private conversation. What are you doing, fucking following me around?”
“I was worried! I saw you run out of there like a lunatic, chased by Scott, and then you two started shouting! Anyone out here could have heard you! Don’t turn this around on me — what are you doing? What the hell are youdoing?”
“I don’t know, you tell me, what did you hear?”
“I heard, ‘passionately fucking my high school boyfriend before I crawled back into bed with my wife’!”
Carver nodded, his spine growing hot and stiff, and then he started walking again, striding past her across the grass.
“Carver,” she shouted, chasing him. “Tell me what’s going on, right now.”
“No,” he shouted over his shoulder. “No thanks! No need.”
“CARVER! God damn you, come back here!”
God damn you, like a clap of thunder. She’d screamed at him before, of course, but she had never damned any of her children, as far as he was aware. He felt an echo of his earlier giddy defiance. Finally it would be out, finally it would all be laid on the table, and whatever his parents said to him now would be their responsibility. He would no longer have to painedly steward their imagined reactions.
Letty’s earlier words came to him, and he decided to head for the parking lot, not the reception hall. He’d planned to have Lillian or Conway drive them back, but this was fine. He didn’t feel nearly so drunk now that he was full of adrenaline. If he took it slow he could make it back safe.
His mother was still behind him, calling his name and urging him to stop, but she was barefoot — holding her heels in her hand — and not nearly as fast as he. You snooze, you lose! As they got closer to the clubhouse, he heard her talking into her phone, seemingly to his father. Great, whatever. They couldn’t actually make him talk to them. He had a car in the parking lot and keys in his pocket. He didn’t have to do fucking anything.
As he crested the hill the clubhouse rested on, he saw his father standing at the edge of the patio, his glowing phone held to his ear. Doug put the phone down and shouted, “Carver! Hold on!”
Carver bolted to the right, running around the clubhouse toward the parking lot. He could hear his father swearing and running after him. He was genuinely giddy now, energized and playful like a loose dog. It was like a game — who could catch him? Nobody! They were all so slow!
