I Now Pronounce You Someone Else (2 page)

Getting back together with Chad would have made my mother happy. Much less awkwardness, then, between her and her good friend Sandy, Chad’s mom, who, by the way, wanted me to call her Sandy too. And not being a huge fan of awkwardness myself, I refused by calling her Absolutely Nothing.

Mrs.
Dykstra took to calling Chad and me The Lovebirds. “The Lovebirds want to be alone again,” she sang whenever I was at Chad’s and suggested we hang out in any room but the one his parents were in. Bathroom, closet, attic. I didn’t care.

Chad knew we were not lovebirds and were never going to be.

Well. I thought he knew.

We got close. Pretty darn close but never actually naked. I always stopped before clothes came off and body parts peeked or popped out. Some of them have minds of their own if you let them go too far.

Chad was a great kisser and great looking, one of the first guys in our class who actually grew legs and shoulders. He had a perfect mess of dark wavy hair that he let grow a little longer during football season, just for the effect, I think, of taking off his helmet and shaking sweat out of it.

It was a very sexy effect.

We didn’t start going out until well after football season ended. In fact, we had only been going out about three months by prom night, and I guess that was long enough to give Chad the idea that we should be sleeping together, by which I mean we should lose our virginity together, and wouldn’t that be romantic, he liked to say.

But I didn’t think it would be. I wanted to wait until I was married for that. Not a big political statement, just something right for me, something I wanted to share with one person, the guy I would love for the rest of my life. And in the meantime, I thought kissing was romantic. Kissing for hours and going home completely rumpled and smoothing my hair before I walked in the house. So I told him I wasn’t ready, which was my way of saying, “This is as far as we go.”

He was ready on our first date—not that he tried anything. But looking back, the guy was perpetually seconds away from taking off his jeans. And mine.

On prom night, it wasn’t jeans. It was a tux and my gown, with romance in the air. At the beginning of the night, after he picked me up, I felt close enough to him to tell him my Switched at Birth Theory. We were in his
car, and he turned his music down as I talked, and he said, at the end of my explanation and gazing straight into my eyes, “I don’t get it.”

“Oh, never mind,” I said. “It’s just a theory I have. About my life. And who I really am.”

“You’re not really Bronwen?”

“No, I’m really Bronwen,” I said to his apparent thank-God-my-girlfriend’s-not-crazy relief. “But in the event I turn out to be Someone Else, this is my theory of how that came to be. It’s just something I’m fooling around with.”

Except I’m not really fooling around with most of it
, I wanted to add but didn’t.

Prom went downhill from there.

We went back to my house after the dance so that I could change for the after-prom parties. Mother and my stepfather, Whitt, were asleep, which left Sam, our seven-year-old golden retriever, to greet us with a wagging behind and a happy little whine, which was practically how Mother greeted Peter every time he came home from college.

“Let’s go downstairs,” Chad whispered.

“Let me go change first.”

“No,” he said, taking my hand. “It’s so nice and quiet in here. My ears are still ringing from prom. Let’s just go downstairs and sit for a few minutes.”

“Okay,” I said and really wanted to change first but, oh, well, figured I’d do it in a few minutes. Sam followed us to the basement and sat at my feet where I scratched him some more while Chad took off his jacket,
loosened his tie, unbuttoned the first couple of buttons on his shirt, and made some remark about finally being comfortable.

“Try wearing a strapless dress some night and then tell me again about comfort,” I said.

“Well, let’s see what we can do to make you more comfortable,” he said, and we started to kiss. And then Chad whispered, “I love you.”

I sat back.

“What?” I nearly giggled.

“I said I love you,” he said and started kissing me again.

And before I could say anything, I felt him tug on the zipper on my dress.

“Chad,” I cautioned.

He pressed his body against mine and slid one leg over me.

“Chad, what are—” I said.

“I love you.”

I pushed against his chest. He pressed harder against me and tugged again on my zipper. And I felt one hand on my chest. And one on my waist. And one on my arm. It was as if he had grown four more limbs.

“Chad.”

“Bronwen, I really love you.”

“Chad, stop,” I said and grunted when I finally pushed him off of me.

The dog sat up—
good boy
—and thumped his tail anxiously on the floor.

“What?” Chad asked.

“We’ve talked about this,” I said, making sure my dress was zipped and nothing was spilling out—not that I had much to spill.

“Bronwen, come on,” Chad said through half a smile. “It’s prom night. We’ve had a great time tonight. We’ve been going out three months.
Three months.
Let’s make this night really special. For both of us.”

“Sex in my parents’ basement is special to you?”

“Okay, so we’ll go to a hotel.” He stood. He was serious. “Come on. Neither one of us has to be home until morning. We’re in a committed relationship. And I love you. Everything’s right.”

“Chad,” I said and sighed.

He tugged at my hand. I stood. He pulled me close and put one arm around my waist.

“Bronwen, I mean it. I love you.”

“Then you won’t mind waiting.”

“For what?” he snapped.

“You know how I feel about this,” I said.

Chad dropped his arm—
good
—and stepped back. He ran a hand through his hair, which he always did whenever he got agitated.

“Let me just go change, and we’ll go to the party,” I said. “Like we planned.”

“You know, Bronwen, there are like eight girls I know that I could be sleeping with.”

“Excuse me?”

“But I’m not because I don’t love them. I’m committed to you. That’s supposed to mean something.”

“Yeah, I appreciate it, but—”

“You appreciate it? Oh, that’s great. Thanks so much for your appreciation.”

“What do you want me to say?” Now I was growing agitated.

“I want you to say it back.”

“Chad.”

“What? Is it so hard?”

Erm.
Yes, it was, because I didn’t love him, but who wants to say those words to someone?

I sighed my way out of answering.

“You don’t even understand how much I love you, do you?” he snarled. “Do you?”

“You don’t love me,” I finally said.

“Oh, really?”

“You just want to have sex with me,” I said.

“Is that what you think of me? That I’d say that just so you’ll sleep with me?”

“Well, listen to yourself. Listen to how mad you are because I’m saying no.”

“No, Bronwen, I’m mad at you because I thought you got me. I thought we had a connection.” He grabbed his coat. “So I just opened up to you. Do you get that? I don’t do that, but I thought I could with you. I thought you were different from every other girl I know. I thought you were the one, and you just crapped all over my feelings. Thanks for humiliating me.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“You know what? I don’t care what you meant. You don’t care what I mean, so as far as I’m concerned, we’re over.”

“Chad—”

I didn’t want him to leave angry.

“I’m outta here,” he said.

But I did want him to leave. And he went.

A few seconds—maybe a minute or two—passed before I plopped back down on the couch and petted Sam.

He licked my face. I called him a good boy and added, “Now
you
I love.”

Later from my bedroom, I called Kirsten, who was at the party Chad and I were supposed to attend, and told her every single detail.

“Sex in your parents’ basement on prom night?” she asked. “What’s special about that?”

So she and I had coffee the next day, and I bumped into Jared, and my face didn’t freeze overnight, and I went to school Monday morning relieved to see that Chad was not waiting for me, as usual, by my locker.

When I passed him in the hall between second and third periods, he smiled some at me and said, “Hey.”

I did and said exactly the same back.

No drama.

Big exhale.

By the end of the day, word had spread through my class—about two hundred people, and we all knew or knew of one another and their business—that Chad and I broke up. Caitlyn Pryce bounced herself in front of me at my locker and asked, “Is it true?”

Caitlyn was a cheerleader. The bouncing came naturally. Or maybe the cheerleading did. It was a chicken-and-egg thing. No one knew which came first, just that they were inseparable.

“That Chad and I broke up? Yes.”

“Ohhh,” she said and startled me with a hug that began just like so many of her cheers minus the
ready, okay.

“I’m just so sorry for you,” she said. “I always thought you guys were going to get married someday.”

“Really? I didn’t.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Thanks,” I said, and she hugged me again, which my mother would have loved. Hugging Caitlyn, that is, not me, since Caitlyn’s the daughter my mother wishes she had—cheerleader, beautiful, bouncy, and blonde. And destined, from birth, to be our Homecoming Queen. In other words, perfect.

Speaking of Mother, I had yet to tell her about Chad and me but knew I had to. When she learned things about me from her friends or mine, she punished me for days with little darts of guilt. “Imagine my surprise hearing this about you from Mrs. Whomever.” Or, “I guess you didn’t need my advice here.” Or, my favorite, “I used to talk these things over with
my
mother.”

Her mother’s the one who believes lightning can freeze.

Technically, I did not lie to Mother or Whitt Sunday morning when they asked me how prom was.

“Oh, it was fine,” I said, passing through the kitchen to fetch a Diet Coke from the fridge before retreating to my bedroom.

And prom itself
was
fine. Big fancy dance. Good band. Loved the dresses, particularly mine and that I kept it on all night.

It was the Incident After Prom I did not feel like discussing—not that I ever discussed much with them.

Nothing personal.

Nothing real.

We liked to discuss the evening news, though. We’re all up-to-date on current events. And—
erm
—it was time to bring Mother up-to-date on my own.

I found her in the kitchen late Monday afternoon, filling a vase of red tulips with water. She didn’t see me at first. I stood in the doorway, far to her right, just looking for a moment at her, at the tulips, at her long legs in sleek beige pants, a loose white blouse tucked into nothing at all for a waist. That’s how she dressed for lunch with friends or for meetings or holidays or filling vases with water.

For a moment, I leaned my shoulder against the door frame.

You’re so beautiful.

“Sorry, honey?” Mother said, startling me.

“The flowers. They’re beautiful.”

“Aren’t they? They were the centerpieces Somewhere where I did Something with Someone and Some Other People too,” she said, and I just was not listening.

She walked out of the kitchen, talking. Put the flowers on the table in the front hall. Came back in talking. And all the while, her high heels clicked and tapped neatly on the wood floor.

I dropped my book bag on the counter, petted Sam, grabbed a Diet Coke, and said at what I hoped was a natural pause in her list of the day’s events, “Oh, I meant to tell you that Chad and I broke up.”

Mother stopped abruptly and turned to face me, her hands pressed flat against her chest.

“What?” she asked.

“Chad and I broke up.”

“Oh, honey. Oh, Bronwen. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s really fine.”

“When did this happen? I thought you had such a nice time at prom.”

“We did. But we just decided not to keep going out. It wasn’t really going anywhere.”

“Oh, honey,” she said, reaching one hand toward me, one hand that didn’t quite reach any part of me. She stepped a little closer—
click, tap
—and tickled my arm a little.

“You must be so upset,” she said.

“I’m really not,” I said and guzzled some of the soda.

“Well,” she said, her brow slightly furrowed with concern.

A couple seconds passed.

Then a couple more.

She returned to the sink.

I walked upstairs to my room.

I had homework.

She had tulip stems to throw out.

Later, I heard her tell Whitt, just after he got home, how terribly upset I was by the breakup, and maybe he shouldn’t say anything about it to me just then.

He didn’t.

At dinner, we discussed the lack of government oversight of private contractors in war zones. It was the lead story on the news.

“Bronwen?”

I knew, by his voice, exactly who had just called me, and, okay, I had also memorized his number, even though I had not yet dialed it.

“Yes?” I said.

“Hey, it’s Jared.”

“Hey,” I said and promptly made myself more comfortable, plopping down on the middle of my bed.

“Is this too late to call on a school night?”

Erm
—school night. Now
I
wanted to be thirty-five.

“Hmm. Ten eighteen,” I said. “Nope. You’ve got about an hour and forty-five minutes before I turn into a pumpkin.”

“A pumpkin?”

“It’s something my dad used to say,” I said. “Whenever Peter and I wouldn’t go to bed when we were little, he’d tell us we were turning into pumpkins. He’d feel the tops of our heads and say, ‘Oh, I can feel a stem.’ And apparently, midnight was the Pumpkin Witching Hour. If you
weren’t asleep by midnight, you were a member of the squash family for all eternity.”

“That’s pretty funny. I’ve never heard that before,” he said.

“It made us smile,” I said.

Lots of things my dad said and did made us smile. All of us. Mother too.

He died in a private plane crash when I was six. Peter was nine.

Jared knew the story. His dad was best man at Mother and Whitt’s wedding two years later.

“But, no, I’m usually up until eleven or eleven thirty. I’m not exactly a morning person,” I said.

“No? I am. Mornings are great at home. I get up around six and have coffee with my parents. It’s really nice. This is actually kind of late for me these days, so I won’t keep you long.”
Darn.
“I’m actually just calling for two reasons. One to see if you want to go with me to Rose’s Friday night. Six o’clock?”

“Sure. Is this the Hope College Pitch Night? You want me to call Kirsten and her boyfriend?”

“No,” he said evenly. “This is the Take Bronwen to Dinner Night. We can do the Hope thing later. Unless you’d rather do that Friday.”

“No. Rose’s is good,” I said.

“You didn’t get back together with your boyfriend, did you?” he asked lightly. “If you did, you can bring him.”

“Chad? No. I talked to him last night and saw him today, and things are okay. We’re kind of
giving each other some space, you know, but I don’t hate him.”

“Kirsten seems to.”

“Kirsten does.”

“I like it that you don’t.”

“I’m not crazy about his parents,” I confessed.

“Really? Tell me the whole story Friday.”

“The whole story?”

“All of it. I can hardly wait. And now for my second reason for calling.”

“Yes.”

“Just to say good night,” he said, and I could not wait to tell Kirsten this.

“Really?” My cheeks ached from smiling. “Okay.”

And then I waited, sitting there on my bed, smiling stupidly, wondering—
wait, was that the good night; do I say it back now; is it too late to say it?

But then he said so beautifully, almost sleepily, “So, then, good night, Bronwen. Sleep well.”

“You too,” I said and then rolled my eyes at my completely uninspired response while I dialed Kirsten’s number in record time.

And for the first two minutes of our conversation, we didn’t even bother pretending we were thirty-five and dived right into what could only be described as gushing.

“Okay,” Kirsten said, the first to remember her condo and her job. “Okay, let’s just stop here. It’s just one phone call. And, so, okay, he’s good on the phone.”

“He’s very good on the phone,” I said. “And at coffee shops.”

“Phone and coffee shops. Right. Now we’ll see how he does at dinner. And after dinner—”

“The kiss,” I said and then remembered, “Oh, hey. Do I have to tell Chad I’m going out with him?”

“I wouldn’t go out of my way,” she said. “If you’re talking to him, and it comes up, it comes up. But right now, it’s really not that big a deal. It’s just one date. I mean, really, Pheebs, it’s possible you and Jared will have nothing in common, and you’ll sit there all through dinner discussing the menu.”

“Or the lack of government oversight of private contractors in war zones,” I said.

In the morning, in the midst of my normal granola and Diet Coke breakfast, Whitt put a hand on my arm and quietly asked, “Everything okay, Bronwen?”

“Yes, thank you. Everything is fine,” I said as reassuringly as possible. “I’m not remotely upset about Chad.” I looked over at Mother, halfway across our cavernous kitchen, who pretended not to hear. “We talked. We’re friends, and—really—everything is fine.”

“Just checking,” Whitt said, adding a nod toward Mother that she didn’t see and wasn’t meant to, and it made me smile.

“In fact,” I announced, carrying my bowl to the black marble breakfast bar, “I have a date Friday night with Jared Sondervan.”

“Jared Sondervan?” Mother asked.

She clicked and tapped her way across the
room. Whitt sat one seat away from me with his coffee.

“Jared Sondervan?” Mother asked again in a tone halfway between surprise and approval.

“Yes. Jared Sondervan,” I said casually and started flipping through the newspaper, dividing it into the parts Whitt and I read first. He got the national news. I took metro.

“Jared Sondervan,” Mother now pondered. “Well, I always wondered which of your brother’s friends you’d date first. You’ll have to call Peter and tell him. He’ll be so tickled.”

“Sure,” I said, by which I meant
No.

“Wouldn’t it be fun if Peter came in this weekend?” she continued. “He could go with you.”

I raised my eyebrows at her, and she blushed a little at herself.

“No, honey, I don’t mean on your date. I just meant if Peter were here, it would be fun for the three of you to do something together. That’s all. Now wouldn’t you enjoy that?”

“I would,” I said, too enthusiastically and showing her all my teeth, which puzzled her—my teeth, that is, not my enthusiasm.

Her Real Daughter was enthusiastic where enthusiasm was required and had teeth that resembled her own.

I knew Mother would call Peter before I reached school. She’d leave a message that he would return in three, maybe four days. And she always understood the delay. After all, he was Jesus, and Jesus had things to do.

When I passed Chad in the hall that morning between second and third periods, he nodded at me and added a
hey, Bronwen.
On Thursday, the
hey, Bronwen
was accompanied by a smile, and by Friday he was practically intimate, adding a wink and a
see ya
, which, as late as that afternoon, Kirsten and I could not decipher.

“Maybe it was just a kind of ‘see ya Tuesday’ thing,” she said as we sat at our favorite table at the Java Bean.

Monday was Memorial Day.

Memorial Day
, I remembered.

I quickly dialed my mother’s phone number.

“Oh, yeah,” Kirsten said. “This has your mother all over it.”

My parents threw three parties annually—a formal Christmas party, a casual fall get-together, and a Memorial Day Family Cookout. The guest lists were long. The Dykstras were on every one, and they always attended.

“Mother?” I said, dragging out her name, hoping to disguise my aggravation with pretend curiosity. “By any chance, have you and Mrs. Dykstra been discussing Chad and me and the cookout lately?”

“Of course not,” she said. “I just told her how much you’re looking forward to seeing him at the party, and that you hope he comes.”

“You did.”

“Why?” she asked, and I heard notes of defensiveness in her voice. “Was that the wrong thing to say?”

“No,” I said, by which I meant
Are you kidding me?!

“You did say you and he are still friends and that everything is fine. And that’s really all I said to Sandy.”

“Yes. I did.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Oh—uh—no reason, really. It’s nothing. Just wondering. Chad was—uh—really happy to see me today.”

“Honey, I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “I’m very fond of Chad. I wouldn’t like to think that you’ve been unkind to him.”

Then she told me she loved me and said good-bye, and I stared openmouthed at Kirsten a second or two before saying, “I think my mother got Chad and me back together. At least in Chad’s mind.”

“Why didn’t you say anything to her?” Kirsten said before waving her hand in front of her face. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Does no good. You know, if you get back together with him, you’re going to have to start calling his mom Sandy.”

“I’m going to have to start buying condoms by the case.”

Kirsten laughed so hard she nearly shot coffee through her nose but managed to avoid indelicacy with a napkin.

“Just call him and clear it all up,” she finally said.

“He’s got a game right now.” Baseball. “I’ll do it tomorrow. I don’t want it to be, ‘Oh, we need to talk.’ It’s too big a deal as it is.”

Anyway, I had much pleasanter things to think about, i.e., my date with Jared that night, and, yes, I was procrastinating.

I did not adore the idea of breaking up with my ex-boyfriend twice in one week and hoped I would not have to.

It turns out I didn’t.

It just didn’t turn out the way I thought it would.