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Laughter bubbles up around the room. Uncle Martin continues, “He told me he was going to marry that girl someday. Being the confirmed bachelor that I am, I tried to talk him out of this foolishness, but he wouldn’t be swayed. If I remember correctly Aidan, your exact words were ‘Well I’m marrying her, and we’ll just see about all this.’ You were bullheaded even as a six year old.”
I glance over to Aidan who chuckles at this along with the rest of our guests. Then Uncle Martin turns back to me. “Anyway, Welcome to the family, Maddie, Salut!”
He raises his glass. Our guests start clinking their champagne glasses encouraging us to kiss, and so we do.
Brian gets up next. “I’m afraid I’ve got more details to share about the sordid history of these two.” He waits for the guests to get their nervous giggles out and continues. “I was there the first time she broke his heart that Valentine’s Day. It was brutal. And he might have been a tiny bit of a stalker for a while after that.”
“She finally came around and gave me a chance,” Aidan says, his arm around me. Is he trying to manifest right now? But I can see what they’re doing. All of this has been orchestrated to disperse the unease of that first dance song, so this can all play off as “cute” and an “inside joke” instead of creepy to calm our guests’ minds.
My parents, Erica, and I all know the truth. And none of us will dare speak it.
Brian goes back to talking, “You’ve got your chance, Kid, now don’t fuck it up.”
After the toasts we return to the dance floor. Some of my chosen playlist gets played, but there’s also a definite stalker theme going strong… “Every Breath You Take”, “I Put a Spell on You”, “Make You Feel My Love,” “God is a Weapon.”
We slow dance to “Unchained Melody”. I try not to look into his eyes, but I can’t help it. His gaze consumes me. It takes everything in me not to reach up and trace the angry scar on his face. When the song is over we sit back down for a while.
Aidan and I don’t get to talk to each other because about fifty of his relatives come by in a nearly endless line, introducing themselves to me, making comments about my “birthing hips”, something which I do not have. They’re asking when we’re going to start a big Catholic family.
I blanch at this because somehow in all the details and in my knowing Aidan was probably Catholic, it somehow escaped the screaming pit inside my brain that he might be against birth control, and it might not be a matter of having one kid I don’t know if I even want to have, but eight or ten.
I’m about to turn to gauge Aidan’s reaction to all this talk about big Catholic families, but he’s disappeared again. I politely excuse myself and go find Erica.
“How are you holding up?” she asks.
Much like Carol, who is flitting about the actual party now, “managing things”, Erica has found the magic of hiding out in the kitchen.
“As well as can be expected,” I say. I usually tell Erica everything, but something stops me from telling her about Aidan’s reaction to the fireworks. In the first place, I don’t know what the hell it means, but also it felt private. It feels like I witnessed something he would have never wanted me to see, so now I’m busy trying to pretend I didn’t see it.
Some vulnerability I’m not supposed to know. Is he angry I saw whatever that was? I’m not sure.
I’ve increasingly been keeping more and more things from Erica. I’m not sure why, but now I feel compelled to tell her about what happened in that alley that night when we were on the phone and who drove me home.
“There’s something I didn’t tell you about that night I found out I was marrying Aidan.”
Twelve
Aidan
Forty-five minutes ago. Immediately after the fireworks.
* * *
I hear Maddie’s voice and come back to the present, at least enough to get myself away from her and the party. I exit through a side employee-only door and go down several hallways until I find a men’s bathroom. I move the giant stainless steel trash can in front of the door. It may not stop someone from trying to come in, but it’ll at least give me a warning if they do.
My heart is racing, and I can’t get the images out of my mind. I smack at my own head as though I can get them out this way. I turn on all the water faucets and flush all the toilets while I scream as loud as I can.
I pace. My skin feels tight. This room is too small and hot, but I can’t be out there with all those people. Why is it so hot in here? Fuck!
I loosen my tie and splash some cold water on my face. Finally, I calm my immediate meltdown enough to sit in a corner of the room. The water still runs in the sink as I hold myself, my knees drawn up to my chest, rocking back and forth, and suddenly I’m five years old again, sitting under that conference table at the top of the Stryker building.
I’d been watching the fireworks display that night when one of my dad’s men had told him there seemed to be a disturbance in the building. Some people went down to check and never came back. Others followed them, and then they never came back.
Then the shooting started on our floor. So much blood and screams. I’d never heard grown men scream like that. Gunfire and fireworks all blended together as I sat huddled under the big table crying, scared whoever it was out there would kill me, too.
I take several slow breaths willing my hands to stop shaking. This is when I realize I’m crying.
I angrily swipe my face with the back of my hands. I’m furious that the one person who was pure and clean of all this is now somehow blended with the trauma of my past. Those fucking fireworks! I was far too cavalier, trusting Carol to just “handle things”. She’d come highly recommended. But there was no way she could have known fireworks would send me into a full mental spiral.