“I don’t even hate the caterer!” Erin said. “I just don’t understand the caterer. Why do they keep asking me questions? I don’t want to think about napkins. I would pay extra not to think about napkins. I don’t want this much control.”
“You understand you may be an unusual bride in that way,” Laurie said.
“I’m going to give the caterer a pair of dice and tell them to roll a number every time they consider calling me about something.”
“I can’t recommend that,” Laurie said. “That’s how you end up with shrimp.” Erin hated shrimp.
Erin offered a frustrated groan. “Talk to me about something else. How are you? How’s the house?”
“It’s fine.” Laurie ran through the events of the last few days, ending, of course, with “So now I have a date.”
“Oh my God, your old boyfriend,” Erin said. “That is a nostalgia tour if there ever was one. I can’t think of anyone I have ever broken up with who I would want to go on a date with now, especially someone I dated in high school.”
“College, too,” Laurie said. “We were one of those high-school couples who were definitely, totally going to stay together in college even though they’re going to opposite coasts. You know: ‘we’re not like everybody else,’ ‘we’re going to stay together,’ ‘we’re really in love,’ all that jazz.”
“How long did you make it?”
“Two years. We were about to start junior year, and he was talking about going to grad school after we graduated. And I realized that he wanted to come back and live here and have a job here, and I was not thinking about that at all, you know? I had a lot of things I wanted, and going back where I started wasn’t on the list, even if it had been the best place in the world. I just wanted something new, something bigger and different. I was thinking about whether I wanted to live in the mountains or in New York, and he was thinking about which of three streets he wanted to live on that were all within five miles of where we went to elementary school. So all we were going to do was put several more years into this in-between situation where we rarely saw each other, and then we were going to break up anyway. So I pulled the plug.”
“I hope you did it in person.”
“Of course I did. I tried to do it fast, tried to do it nicely. Cried the whole time, but whatever.”
“Oh, no,” Erin said. “You’re going to break his heart again.”
“We’re going out as friends,” Laurie said.
Erin’s “Ha!” was not exactly amused, not exactly scornful; it was kind of sympathetic. “Oh, ‘as friends.’ He was your first love!”
“Yeah, but now I’m old and he’s divorced and we’ve both had sex with other people, and it’s really not the same.” She waited, but Erin was quiet. “It’s just dinner.”
* * *
—
When she was finished talking to Erin, Laurie loaded a box of board games into her car. She’d promised them to June for the kids and offered to drop them off, since any excuse to get out of the house was a good excuse.
June was taking classes online for her master’s degree in history, and Charlie worked for the county. They had a house with a yard big enough for the kids to have a whole setup with swings and ropes and ladders, for June to have a garden, and for Charlie to keep a few hens. When Laurie got there, they’d had dinner already and the whole family was out back: June doing some weeding while Tommy crouched nearby, Bethie climbing up the ladder and sliding down the slide over and over, and Charlie cleaning out his coop.
“Hello, Devons,” Laurie called out as she let herself in through the gate. “I am here with some very dusty games.”
Tommy looked up briefly, then went back to whatever he was examining in the dirt. But Bethie hopped off the ladder and ran over to examine the box. “How do you play them?” she asked as she peeked into it.
June wiped her hands on a green towel and walked over. “I think what Bethie means is ‘thank you,’？” she said, and she put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder.
“Thank you,” Bethie said, appropriately chagrined.
“You’re very welcome,” Laurie said. “Honestly, I only know how to play some of them. And I only like some of them. My personal opinion? Don’t play Careers,” she said.
“How come?” Bethie asked.
“Because thinking about whether you’ll earn enough money as an astronaut is not much of a game.” Laurie put the box down on the table on the small flagstone patio. Also on the table was a rectangle of red Legos that outlined an area maybe the size of a shoebox, with walls about three inches high. “What’s this?” she asked.