Charles Baxter - Saul and Patsy

“Well, she is. I guess nobody told her parents. She goes by ‘Lis.’”

“Lis,” Saul repeated.

“Yeah. Or ‘Phyl’—whatever.” Howie glanced at Saul, then glanced around the living room. “You’ll be my best man?”

“Of course. Where’d you meet her? What’s she like? Do you have a picture? When’s the wedding?”

“Naturally I have a picture.” Howie took a sip of his wine. He gave Saul his trickster smile.

“Well, may I see it?”

“Oh. Okay.” Howie reached for his wallet and pulled out a photograph, which he handed to Saul. It showed a pretty young woman standing on the seashore in the Bay Area — Ocean Beach, Saul guessed — whose auburn-colored hair was shoulder length, and with a display of short bangs and delicate hands raised in a double wave. She wore a thin blue jacket. In the photograph the wind was apparently blowing from left to right, causing several strands of her hair to press themselves against her cheek. The hair against her cheek attracted Saul to her. He was moved by how she stood in the wind. Her smile was lovely and warm. She had the appearance of amiability and sweetness and strength, though her eyes were slightly recessed and did not quite participate in the smile she was smiling. She looked like Patsy. She looked like Patsy’s sister, if Patsy actually had a sister. She looked like Patsy. She looked like Patsy. She looked like Patsy’s sister. Saul felt a mild shock before he recovered himself.

Howie might have said, “So. What d’you think?” but then he wouldn’t have been Howie.

“She’s very pretty,” Saul told his brother. “Is she Jewish?”

“Yes,” Howie said noncommittally. He glanced straight up at the ceiling. “Why do you ask?”

“Just thinking about Mom. Not that she cares one way or another. Well, that’s another story. She’s very pretty,” Saul repeated, suddenly and unpleasantly aware that he had accidentally left his pronoun referent vague — the unconscious at work, always busy, always looking for opportunities to make Saul slip up.

“Thanks,” Howie said, as if he were responsible for his fiancée’s good looks. “You know, I can’t wait to see Emmy.” He said this without enthusiasm, the phrase oiled with politeness.

“She and Patsy will be home any minute now,” Saul said. “Any minute.” Then he blurted out, “You know, this Phyllis of yours looks a lot like Patsy.”

Howie coughed angrily. Then he said, “That’s a strange thing to observe. She doesn’t look at all like Patsy. They’re completely different. You’re hallucinating.”

“Of course she looks like Patsy. They could be sisters.”

“Saul, what makes you say that?”

“Look at her hair . Look at her smile . That expression on her face.” Look at her benevolence, he wanted to say, but didn’t, because no one ever said things like that, except sentimentalists.

“Are you telling me that I searched around until I found someone like your wife?”

“No,” Saul backpedaled, “I’m not telling you that.”

“Because she doesn’t look like Patsy at all.” Howie sat up like a guard who has heard an alarm go off. “She looks completely like herself.”

“Sure. Of course.”

“ I know,” Howie said, “we’ll ask Patsy, once she gets home.” He stood up and stretched, as if he had reached the inevitable crossroad and had made the correct turn. “Let Patsy decide whether Lis looks like her.” He leaned backward. “You asked what she’s like.”

“Yes,” Saul said. “I did.”

“She works with me. . with us. At eFlea.” In one of his phone calls, Howie had informed Saul that he currently was one of the partners in an online flea market, positioned to compete with eBay. “She’s smart and beautiful.” Then, after a long beat, Howie said, “She reads the encyclopedia to relax. On New Year’s Eve we both made resolutions, and I made her resolve to go on exactly as she had been in the past. And she did. She resolved to go on being the way she was. We met when. . well, she came to me when I was coking up and drinking too much and screwing everything in sight, and she sort of fixed me up with herself. I was a mess, all glue and shards.” Howie waited. “The Great Chain of Misbehavior, with me at the bottom, buried in all that cash I had made and was losing. There are a lot of me ’s out there,” he said, apparently meaning the West Coast. “You know,” Howie said, warming to the subject, “my character doesn’t exactly fill me up. My character only goes out partway to my edges. But Lis’s character goes out all the way to her fingertips. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” Saul said, because he himself could have said it about Patsy.

“Anyway,” Howie said, “I had to come out here and ask you to be my best man, and also, before Lis and I are married, to give you what I want to give you.”

“What’s that?”

“About two million dollars,” Howie said.

“That’s a lot of money,” Saul said, in a blank, not registering at all what his brother had said.

“Well, it’s in equities from various companies out there I’ve bought into, and you can’t sell them, as I’ll explain to you tomorrow, because that would be illegal. It’s all paper wealth. Is there any more wine in there, in the kitchen?”

“Yes,” Saul said, so numb that he felt that he might have had a stroke. “Come with me.”

When they were in the kitchen, the front door opened, and Patsy came in the house with a noisy bustle, and she sang out, “Saul! The scapegoating has started! We have to move! We have to move out of this place.” Then she began singing. “We gotta get out of this place! If it’s the last thing we ever do!”

He and Howie came out of the kitchen, and when Patsy saw Saul’s brother, she said, “Oh, Howie.” She kissed him. “So that was your BMW. What a nice surprise. Sorry you caught me singing.” They gave each other brotherly-sisterly kisses — Saul watched them do it.

“Love,” Howie said, unwrapping his charm before her, smiling. “You can sing anytime.”

Howie picked up Emmy, and he made kissing noises as he looked in her brown eyes. He kissed his niece on the cheek, and in return she smiled at him broadly, which she had never done so rapidly with a stranger before.

“She’s very solid,” said Howie, once so fragile himself.

“What a beautiful woman,” Patsy said, holding Howie’s photograph of his fiancée. She and Saul, tag-teaming, had taken Emmy upstairs, changed her into a fresh diaper and her pink pajamas, sung to her, and watched her fall asleep. Now they were together in the living room, the three of them drinking white wine and examining the picture of Howie’s Lis.

“Saul thinks she looks like you,” Howie said, glancing at Patsy. He was slurring his words a bit. “I said she didn’t.”

“She doesn’t look at all like me. Her hair is different from mine, for one thing.”

“She certainly does look like you,” Saul muttered crossly, staring at his wife, as if he were the final authority on all questions of resemblance.

“You guys. No, she’s not a bit like me. The only female in the world who looks a lot like me,” Patsy said, “is my daughter. Howie, you’re a lucky man. When’s the wedding date?”

“Next summer.” He then lowered himself from his chair onto the floor. There, on the floor, he continued his side of the conversation as he performed stretch exercises. He said he was stiff from the day’s drive. “We’re going to be married in Golden Gate Park. Lis wants to honeymoon in Hawaii, and she’s found a place on Maui where you can walk and go on excursions if you want to, or you can just stay right there, and it’s still Paradise. There are plans, and more plans, and more plans after that, about this wedding. You don’t even want to know about all these plans. I can’t keep track of them all. I never knew getting married was so complicated. It’s like managing a merger. Strategy and paperwork.”