The Wedding Party. Robyn Carr

It’s Stephanie.”

      “Put her through.” Click, click. “Steph, honey, I’m really—”

      “Mom, I hate him!”

      Charlene sank into her chair. Sacramento could be crumbling around them in the throes of a six-point-eight shaker and still Stephanie would assume that the current state of her love life was of paramount concern to everyone. Stephanie didn’t even bother to say hello or ask Charlene if she had a few minutes. “Hmm,” Charlene hummed, noncommittal.

      “I have tickets for Grease. Do you know how hard they were to get? How much they cost? And he promised me, promised me he’d get the night off. How often do I ask him to do that?”

      Probably very, very often, Charlene thought, but she held her tongue.

      “Is there absolutely no one in the state of California, in the city of Sacramento, who can stand behind the bar and sling a few drinks so he can go to a musical with me?”

      “Stephanie, I doubt it’s as simple as that.”

      “Mom, I’ve had it with spending every night alone. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life like this.”

      “Honey, I sympathize with you, but you’re going to have to work this out with Grant,” she said.

      “You could hate him too,” she whined.

      “It’s hard to hate Grant. He’s such a doll.”

      “Mom.”

      “He is. He’s good to you. And patient. And smart. And he makes a nice living while putting himself through school. There’s a lot to admire about his hard work.”

      “At the bar. Every night. With drunk women coming on to him all night long. Begging him to take them home.”

      “My gosh,” Charlene mocked. “That must be nearly irresistible for him.”

      “That’s not the point,” Stephanie said. “You can imagine where this leaves me. With two fifty-dollar tickets.”

      “Is there no one else who would like to go see Grease with you?” she asked.

      “That’s not the point either!”

      “Then, Stephanie, what is the point?” Charlene asked tiredly.

      “The point is, I don’t want to be alone all the time. I want my partner, the man of my heart, to spend time with me. To come home to me before I’m asleep!”

      Charlene took a deep breath and did not say all the things that came to her mind. Like, You cannot expect the man of your heart to entertain you all the time. And, Didn’t you know he was a bartender when you suggested you move in together? Or even, Oh my darling, my dearest child, you are so rotten spoiled.

      Stephanie was bright, adorable, funny and sensitive, but she had an overblown sense of entitlement not entirely rare in a twenty-five-year-old. Especially a twenty-five-year-old only child.

      “Mom? Are you there?”

      “Yes, Stephanie. Look, you knew all about Grant’s hours and commitments before you—”

      “I might want to move back home, Mom,” she said.

      Charlene bolted upright. “What?”

      “I’ve been giving some thought to moving in with you, Mom.”

      “Stephanie, think about what you’re saying. You’d be getting a roommate who would nag you to keep things tidy all the time. You would live with someone who is driven almost homicidal by dust bunnies! And you’re…how can I put this kindly? Simply not up to the job.”

      “You don’t have to be mean,” she said.

      “And you don’t have to be sloppy, but you are. We’ve been over this before, Steph. I love you more than my life, but I won’t take you on as a roommate again until I can be sure you can hold up your end of the deal. If you’re serious about wanting to live with me, you’d better go home and clean that apartment from top to bottom and prove you can keep it that way.” She sighed. “Honey, I suspect you’d be better off trying to work things out with Grant. I know you love him very much.”

      “I don’t want to waste my life waiting around for a man who’s…who’s…”

      “Who’s working?” Charlene asked sharply. “You’d better think about this, Stephanie. You made a major commitment to him. The two of you have been together a long time. This bartending, this was part of his plan. It’s an excellent income for a student. Isn’t he almost finished with school?”

      “Ha! That’ll be the day. He’s already talking about getting a master’s. And that’s only the beginning of my nightmares. He says he’s going to test for the police academy.”

      “Really? Well, I’m not surprised he’s taking that direction. He’s been real interested in forensics and constitutional law and—Are you so completely surprised?”

      “I’m horrified! Straight from spending every night at the bar to spending every night on the streets getting shot at.”

      “Well Jesus, Stephanie,” Charlene said, out of patience, “what the hell do you want him to do? Win the lottery?”

      “I just don’t want to…you know…”

      “No I don’t know. What?”

      “I don’t want to end up like you!”

      Charlene couldn’t get a breath. She didn’t want to hear any more.

      “Mom, you know what I mean. Don’t you? I mean, it figures, with what you do for a living, you’d be pretty suspicious of marriage. Bitter about it.”

      Oh boy, this was only getting worse. Bitter? Like a dagger. “Stephanie, I have a call on another line. Can we talk about this later?”

      “Oh, God, now you’re mad. Mom, look, I can understand why you’d want your kind of life, and it’s right for you and everything, but that doesn’t mean that I—”

      “Steph, I’m sorry, honey. I have to go! I’ll talk to you later.”

      As she clicked off the line, she felt the rare prickle of tears sting her eyes.

      

      Charlene needed something to shift her emotions back to the stable side, and Dennis came to mind. She decided to surprise him by showing up at his E.R. for lunch, something she made time for only rarely. It was not the nastiness of the Samuelsons that had jolted her—she was used to that sorry business. But Stephanie’s remark about her life—or the lack thereof—threatened to ruin her day. What could she have meant? That Charlene didn’t need anyone? That was entirely untrue. She needed a lot of people, mostly Stephanie, even when she was the worst brat. And her mother, Lois, who had named herself Peaches for her only grandchild. And of course, Dennis, the most dependable man in the world. In thinking about it, the only thing she didn’t have in her life was a marriage. And in the presence of all that she did have, she didn’t need that.

      It was true that Charlene was secure as a single woman, had taken to living alone quite easily and felt no desire to have a man’s rowing machine stored under her bed. But did that make her bitter about marriage? No! Certainly not!

      The best way to drive out any plaguing doubt was to see her man, her Dennis, to feel his arm around her shoulders, to look into his warm, reassuring brown eyes and have him tell her for the millionth time that she was an incredible woman.

      It was really Dennis who was incredible. Almost too incredible to be believed.

      When Charlene had reached forty, after twenty years of backbreaking labor as a studying and then working single mother, she had met Dennis—the perfect man. While hiking along the American River she had twisted her ankle and was rescued by the tall, handsome physician’s assistant. His hands on her sprain were gentle, his smile comforting.