Elizabeth Crane - The History of Great Things

— No, I wish. Well, I’m sorry for Ben.

— Yeah. He’s okay. But I’m sure he’ll be happy to have his dad there too.

Fred walks you down the aisle. He is, of course, beaming.

You say your vows; your old friend Bob has gotten ordained just so he can perform your ceremony. People cry and laugh; they know you’re a good couple. I sob and sob, more than a sister might, ordinarily, to the point where some of the guests are wondering what’s wrong with me and are maybe thinking it’s because I’m still single and not because I’m both your sister and your mom and I’m so happy to see you so in love. Everyone walks back up to the house, which is where I unfortunately have to deal with the fact that Victor is now married to that awful Bernadette, and because I’m your sister I can’t just say I knew it! I have to keep acting like we’re sisters, which I guess means that Fred is my father too, which is a little weird. (Am I my own mother? Too much to process at once. Let’s pretend Fred’s second wife is my mom.) At the reception, Fred/Dad takes me aside and tells me how lucky he is to have two such special daughters. He believes he’s had a whole lifetime of knowing me, and that that version of me is someone he would say such a thing to. I want to ask him a bunch of questions, basic ones, like What exactly do you know about me? — which is, of course, absurd, something you might say to a stranger you were suspicious of — but I don’t have to, because he immediately tells me about a camping trip we took when we were kids in the seventies, and our mom was away (ha!), and how different you and I were: you were happy with a Tab in a hammock with your nose in a book, and I wanted to do everything that could be done, go fishing, paddle a canoe. He told me I even asked about hunting, which is hilarious to even think about, me with a gun, not to mention him with a gun ( We skipped that , he says), and of course, hearing this, I knew he’d have been just as happy to sit in a camp chair with you and read too. No question you were his kid. Me, anybody’s guess how far back my odd string of DNA came from. But in his version of history, he took me to do all those things, and you were not happy about having to go along, didn’t know why you couldn’t stay back at the tent. Because you’re nine , he said, so you brought your book into the canoe and we fought; I was pissed that you were sitting in the boat like a lump, and I didn’t know why you were allowed to just do that, and he says that he told me You girls are both the best daughters around, but you’re two different people, and there’s no one thing that’s going to make everybody happy besides roasting marshmallows, and we can’t do that all day, so if she wants to read a book in a canoe that’s fine with me, and if you want to spend all day swimming in the lake, that’s fine with me too. Of course, he also made sure there was time for you to read, and told me it wouldn’t hurt me to read a book either, and after the sun went down we told the silliest ghost stories around the campfire that we could think up, about ghosts who come back and do nice things, like make delicious lobster eggs benedict before you wake up, and then when no one in the family takes credit for it you’re a little spooked because where would you get the lobster in Iowa anyway, and you happen to notice that there are no lobster shells or eggshells in the trash, there’s nothing in the trash at all, and you say Well, you or Mom could have taken the trash out , and you say Mom never takes the trash out , and you laugh because it’s true. The truth is, seeing Fred all these years later, in this way, is weirdly nice. I’m many decades older than I was when we were married, and here I am in the body of a forty-year-old, and I mean, yes, I have had sex with that old man, but he doesn’t know that.

— He probably was a really good father to you.

— He was, Mom.

But getting back to that awful Bernadette. I chat with Victor during the cocktail hour, and of course, just the way Fred thinks I’m his daughter, Victor thinks I’m his stepdaughter; we haven’t seen each other in some years, not so much a falling out as maybe a predictable drift after a late remarriage. He doesn’t know I’m the dead love of his life. Bernadette’s shoving pigs in the blanket in her mouth; she’s a rather crude eater, I have to say, and she looks god-awful, not that she was ever all that attractive but now she’s got her hair dyed dark black, she could use an eye job, and her dress is 100 percent polyester if it’s 1 percent, and it’s been hanging in her closet since 1982. She excuses herself to go to the bathroom. I ask Victor if he’s happy. He says Sure, you know me , I say I mean, with Bernadette . He tells me it’s a different kind of relationship after you lose your wife. She takes care of me instead of the other way around. Yeah, but do you love her like you loved. . Mom? I ask. I love her , he says, but I can tell it’s not in that way that means someone is head over heels. So not like you loved Mom? I ask. It’s just different. She’s a different person. So, different, but also not just as great , I say, and he looks at me like he knows what I want him to say, except I know he doesn’t, he says Sweetheart, what do you want me to say? and I tell him I want you to say that you loved me the best , and he says What? and I realize how that might have sounded, so I say I want you to say that you loved Mom the best , and he says I’m not going to say that , and I say Well, I can tell the difference when you look at her, and he says You don’t know everything , and I say I know more than you think , and I walk away, and I know he knows I’m right.

— Does that make you feel better, being right?

— Kind of.

— We’ve still got some super-weird blendy point-of-view science here. Maybe we’re inventing a new genre. POV-sci.

Okay, so here’s my real wedding, with you thrown in. You’re not my sister in this scenario, you’re the plain old mother of the bride, as it should be. Not that there’s anything plain or old about you. Are you back from the dead? Okay, yes. You’re back from the dead. But not in a zombie way. You’ve just risen. But not in a Jesus way either. Let’s say it’s like you went on a death vacation and then came back.

You show up at my house the night before, because in the afterlife when people get married there’s a notification system for dead parents, who are then given a day pass to come back. Most of the time, the parents opt not to totally freak out their kids and possibly all of the guests as well. After I recover from this shock myself, I introduce you to Ben. We sit down with a cup of tea; he’s now wondering where his mom is, but we can probably assume that his mom was one of the many who opted not to freak people out. You look around the room, and seeing all the traces of you — afghans, photos, furniture, little needlepoints — you get misty. Ben says I’ve heard a lot about you , and you laugh, I can only imagine , you say, and he says he can see now where Betsy gets her beauty from, and you smile at me, you can tell he’s a good one. He thinks I’m beautiful. Maybe all you need to know. We catch you up on some of the other major developments. I’ve published my first book. Am I in it? Yes, Mom, you’re in it. Ben says The common response to news like this is “Congratulations.” Oh, well, yes, that goes without saying. No it doesn’t , he says. You’re actually supposed to say it. It’s okay, honey , I say. How were the reviews? you ask. Seriously? Ben says. The reviews were good , I say. Well, that’s wonderful , you say. What if they were bad? Ben asks. There’s usually a grain of truth in them , you say . Honey, don’t , I say. There’s no point. No, I want to know, what if they were bad? I’ll tell you what if , you say. I only ever got one really bad one in my entire career: the Kansas City paper said I overshadowed the tenor in my death scene in Bohème , but Christ, what a bunch of bullshit that was. I took it down, I’m supposed to be dying of consumption, but that guy couldn’t have sung his way out of his own ball sack. But what if, Mom, what if, I felt confident enough about the work that I wasn’t concerned about the reviews? You may have thought that, but if you didn’t get any bad reviews you wouldn’t know what it would be like. Most people get bad reviews at one time or another. So I shouldn’t be a writer because I might get a bad review? If someone told you before you started that you might get a bad review someday, would you not have become a singer? That makes no sense, Betsy. Right, Mom, it makes no sense.