Chapter 18

reaking up with someone she still loved was turning out to be a whole lot more difficult than Mel had originally thought it would be. She had decided they should break up gradually over senior year so that they would both have time to get used to the fact that they’d be heading off in different directions come June. She had imagined it as a slow, painless process. She had pictured them going on as friends but J.T. was having none of that.

“Don’t expect me to be there for you during one of your little moments of crisis,” he said bitterly. “It’s all or nothing. Either you love me or you don’t.”

Mel didn’t think it was that simple but she wasn’t about to be blackmailed. She wasn’t sure what he meant by moments of crisis but it probably had something to do with her brother, Junior, whom she never talked about and didn’t want to think about now. “It’s nothing then,” she said, and walked off. It was a cold sunny day in mid-January and there were patches of snow everywhere on the frozen ground. She walked home across the campus, down wide, tree-lined streets where children played behind white picket fences. Melting snowmen decorated the lawns like sentries, and here and there Christmas lights still twinkled behind plate-glass windows. The sky was blue and cloudless.

Mel plodded across the frozen ground and tried not to think about J.T. It infuriated her that he could be so unreasonable. She had been hinting at this separation for weeks, warning him that she planned to go off to New York the minute she graduated. And he was finishing up his second year of graduate school and would be looking for a job soon (although not in New York, she hoped). They had been together for three long years and it was time for a break. Not a forever separation, just a break. She had been willing to continue their relationship this last year of school just as before, as long as he understood that she would be leaving for New York in June. But he had misunderstood her, or refused to believe her, and had gone on blithely this morning about them “taking some time off this summer after graduation to backpack around Europe.” They had been sitting in the campus coffee shop, The Boot, and Mel had paused with a steaming cup of organic Guatemalan halfway to her lips.

She put the coffee down and folded her arms on the table. “I’m going to New York this summer,” she said evenly.

He seemed puzzled at first but then he relaxed and said, “Okay, okay, we’ll go to New York.”

“Not us. Me.”

That had started the argument that had raged all morning and into the afternoon, when Mel finally walked off. They had both missed their morning classes, which neither could afford to do (Mel was taking eighteen hours this semester in order to graduate in June), and had sat in The Boot all morning arguing and drinking endless cups of coffee. Finally, at noon, they had risen stiffly and walked to the Duck Pond, where they continued the fight until both sat, drained and weary, on a bench beneath a spreading oak tree. The trees were bare against the winter sky, and the snow here was deeper, drifting in rock crevices and beneath shady stands of mountain laurel. The pond was empty of ducks and vegetation, reflecting the landscape in mirror image.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love him—she did. But you could love someone and still crave distance from them at the same time. At least she could, although he seemed to be having trouble with the concept. She had hoped they could behave like eighteenth-century courtiers, distant and polite, but the truth of the matter was, their relationship had always been stormy, filled with violent arguments and bitter recriminations. It was a wonder it had lasted this long.

They had planned their annual Howl at the Moon Party together but Mel hoped, in light of their recent breakup, that J.T. wouldn’t show up. It had been two weeks since their argument at The Boot and he had called twice. The first time Mel refused to talk to him, and the second time she took the call but they argued and she hung up on him. He hadn’t called since. Mel hadn’t seen him on campus although Sara had run into him at one of the local bars, Drunk out of his mind, she’d said, looking at Mel as if she was entirely to blame. Mel had already explained the situation to Sara and she didn’t feel like talking about it anymore.

“I just hope he won’t show up at the party,” she said. They’d originally planned on going as Jack and Wendy Torrance from The Shining, and it was too late to come up with another costume. Besides, Lola and Annie were going as the creepy twins from the same movie, dressed in matching blue dresses with white stockings, black Mary Janes, and white bows in their hair. Sara was going as Danny, complete with a pageboy wig, overalls and a Big Wheel tricycle. The party had started out as a Mardi Gras affair and had quickly evolved over the years into a costume party with an occult theme, kind of like a cross between Mardi Gras, Halloween, and the Voodoo Ball.

The day of the party Lola, Annie, Sara, and Mel rose early to decorate and make the food. It was something the four of them had always done together, since freshman year anyway, and there was a great deal of chatter and a generally festive atmosphere as they hung fake spiderwebs and Mardi Gras beads, and draped the dining room in black cloth and Bela Lugosi cutouts. Mel made a pitcher of zombies and they spent the afternoon drinking and baking Witches’ Fingers, Spicy Bat Wings, Brain Pâté, Corpse Salsa and Chips, and Green Ghoul Dip. Losing herself in the festivities made it easier for Mel to forget the breakup with J.T, the memory of which closed over her at times like a shroud. She’d be going along happy and contented and suddenly she’d hear his voice in her ear saying, You’ll never find anything like we have, and she’d know with a clear certainty, like a dead weight in her bowels, that he was right.

So what? Life wasn’t about perfection. It wasn’t neat and tidy. It was about loss and longing. Emily Brontë had known that when she wrote Wuthering Heights. That was how Mel thought of herself and J.T. now, like Cathy and Heathcliff doomed to loneliness, to regret, to forever seeking the return of that one perfect love. It was depressing and romantic and so hopelessly true. Mel figured the tragic feeling would engender at least one future novel, maybe not as perfect as Wuthering Heights, but compelling nevertheless. Hopefully a New York Times bestseller.

“There,” Annie said, putting the finishing touches on a plate of deviled eggs that she’d made with olives to simulate eyeballs. She’d used carrot shavings for the eyelashes, and the effect was startling. “Do you think I should make some of those little ghost sandwiches?”

“I think we have enough food,” Mel said.

“We never have enough food,” Sara said. “We always run out.”

It was true. The party had grown over the last few years from a small get-together in a dorm room to an affair with close to one hundred guests. “Well, you know what? Those who want to eat will have to get here early.” Mel poured herself another zombie. She was already half-buzzed. Another zombie or two and she wouldn’t have to think about J.T. Radford at all.

“You can’t invite people and then not have anything for them to eat,” Sara told Mel, wiping her fingers on her jeans. She was busy wrapping a brie in a puff pastry that she had decorated with thin strands of dough to look like a spiderweb.

“Sure you can. Besides, half the people who show up aren’t even invited.”

“Go ahead and make those sandwiches,” Sara said to Annie.

They’d been arguing all morning. For days, really, ever since Mel broke up with J.T. and Sara ran into him in the Bulldog Pub. It was just like Sara to take J.T.’s side even though they’d hardly spoken more than a few words to each other in the three years Mel had dated him.

They heard the front screen door slam and a moment later Lola came dancing into the room, dressed in her costume. They’d sent her to the store earlier to pick up a keg and a bag of ice but she came in carrying nothing but a bleached human skull. “Look what I found!” she said, holding it up like a trophy. She looked like a little girl in her black Mary Janes and white stockings with the big bow stuck in her hair.

Annie looked like a little girl, too, only a dangerous one. She was chopping the crusts off a loaf of Sunbeam bread with a meat cleaver. “Careful,” she said, putting her elbow up to keep the dancing Lola at bay. “I’m using a sharp instrument here.”

Mel took the skull from Lola. It was life-size but made of plastic. “Where’d you get this?”

“One of Briggs’s fraternity brothers stole it from the drama department. They did Hamlet last spring.”

“Stole it?”

Lola frowned. She stuck one finger under the edge of the floppy bow and scratched. “Well, borrowed it,” she said. “We can give it back when we’re through.” She took the skull from Mel and went into the dining room, where she placed it in the center of the table between two tall black candelabras. Mel stood in the doorway, watching her.

“Did you get the ice?”

Lola lifted her shoulders under her ears and put her fingers over her mouth like a little girl who’s been bad but knows she’s adorable anyway. “Oops,” she said.

“Never mind. We’ll get someone else to go. Did you get the keg?”

“Briggs is setting it up out back.” Lola clapped her hands, having already forgotten about the ice. She looked gleefully around the decorated room and did a little dance on the tips of her shiny patent-leather shoes. “Oh, look at the King Cake!” she said.

“Thank your mom for us, will you?” Mel said. Maureen ordered King Cakes for her friends and family every January from a bakery in New Orleans. Her great-grandfather had been one of the founding members of Comus, and it was her way of keeping family traditions alive. Lola donated her King Cake every year to the party; whoever got the Baby Jesus won a door prize. This year’s prize was a quart of vodka.

“You better get ready,” Annie said to Mel. She pushed her way through the doorway with the tray of deviled eggs in her hands. “People will start showing up any minute.” She set the tray down on the table and stood back to admire her handiwork. Looking at Lola and Annie standing there side by side in their matching dresses and white tights, Mel grinned.

“Hey, girls,” she said. “Do your thing.”

Lola clasped Annie’s hand and they made their faces go blank. In deadpan voices they said in unison, “Danny, come play with us. Come play with us, Danny.”

“Okay, now that’s just creepy,” Mel said.

Lola said, “Not as creepy as J.T. carrying an ax and saying ‘Here’s Johnny!’” She’d said it without thinking, of course. She leaned over and rearranged a bowl of M&Ms to cover her embarrassment. Mel and J.T. had been a couple for so long it was hard to think of them as anything else.

Mel gave her a wan little smile. The feeling of melancholy she’d carried all day had faded to a dull ache. The zombies helped. She thought suddenly of Junior. The last time she had talked to him he had been calling from a pay phone in Memphis. He was homeless and she could hear him shouting, Get away from my stuff! Get away from my stuff! and then the phone went dead. She never talked to him again.

“Maybe I can carry the ax,” she said to Lola. Every man she’d ever loved had disappointed her in some way. The trick, she’d learned, was to disappoint them before they had a chance to do it to you. “It might be kind of funny if Danny’s mom turns out to be the homicidal maniac.” She shouted to Sara in the kitchen, “What do you think, Danny? Should I chase you around with an ax?”

“Sure,” Sara said. “I can see you doing that.”

Lola had painted two little spots of color on her cheeks but Annie had no need of rouge. Her face had a feverish quality these days; she went everywhere with her eyes glittering and her face flushed with color. Twice Mel had asked her if she was coming down with something, laying a cool hand on her forehead, and both times Annie had jumped as if pierced with a needle and said, “No! Nothing’s wrong! I feel fine!”

Mel put it down to problems with her love life. Annie had neglected to tell Mitchell about the party this weekend, she had begun to duck his calls on Wednesday nights, and it was just a matter of time, Mel knew, before she broke up with him for good. Everyone but Annie seemed to see it coming, although exactly what it was that they were feuding over seemed unclear. Mitchell had probably forgotten to roll up the tube of toothpaste correctly when he visited last time. Annie would not be an easy woman to love, and Mel felt sure she’d never find anyone who loved her as completely as Mitchell seemed to.

Sara came into the room carrying what remained of the pitcher of zombies. She passed out plastic cups from the sideboard and poured the drinks. “Cheers,” she said, and everyone lifted their glasses. “Here’s to our fourth and last Howl at the Moon Party.”

“No, don’t say that!” Lola cried. “It sounds so final.”

“It is final,” Sara said. “This time next year we’ll all be someplace else.”

“Try not to be so fucking pessimistic,” Mel said. “You’re spoiling my buzz.”

Sara sipped her drink and made a face. “Speaking of buzzed,” she said. “What’s in this?”

“Apricot Brandy, pineapple juice, and rum.” Mel held up four fingers. “Four kinds.”

“Four kinds of rum?” Lola said. “I did not know that.” She looked amazed and happy. The white bow drooped over her ear like a gardenia.

Mel ticked off the rums with her fingers. “Heavy-bodied rum, light Puerto Rican rum, and heavy Puerto Rican rum.”

Lola sipped her drink and held it tightly against her chest, licking her lips. “What’s the fourth kind?”

Mel grinned and looked around the room. “Red rum,” she said.

“Jesus,” Sara said.

“You’re welcome,” Mel said.

Annie, who’d just gotten the reference to The Shining, snorted. “Red rum,” she said. “That’s funny.”