Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [61]
Cunningham was one thing: boorish and annoying, but at least he tried to make conversation. Hayes still lived with his parents. He had an entire wing of his childhood home to himself, complete with a housekeeper. Half of what he said took the form of the phrase “Something this, motherfucker.” For example, when Gabe had asked him in the church before the ceremony started whether he had remembered to turn off his phone, Hayes replied, “Phone this, motherfucker.”
Hayes could hardly hold down a job, and seemed to live only in memory.
“Remember when Gabe’s car was stolen after college?” he said over dinner.
Cunningham snorted. “Yeah, poor Gabe. Insurance company took good care of you after you claimed the brand-new golf clubs in the trunk and the—what was it now?”
“Two thousand CDs,” Hayes said.
Cunningham pounded a fist on the table. “That’s right. Two thousand CDs. Big trunk that must have been. He didn’t have to work for a year and a half.”
“I worked,” Gabe said in a mock defensive tone.
“Oh sure, you worked at Mike’s Deli nine hours a week ’cause those guys were the easiest way to score coke in town,” Hayes said.
Gabe laughed uproariously. He didn’t look at Maggie. She felt her whole body tighten. She knew Gabe drank too much. She was sensitive about it because of her parents’ drinking, so she tried not to be a scold. But he had told her early on that like her, he had never touched drugs.
Hayes’s date gave Maggie a worried glance. “Who wants more wine?” she said.
“Wine this, motherfucker,” Hayes said, and he snorted with laughter.
Maggie pushed her chair away from the table and said she was heading up to their hotel room to bed, even though it was only nine thirty, and the cake hadn’t even been cut. The Goons and their matching blond dates looked up with alarm. Gabe’s big brown eyes pleaded with her not to make a scene.
He didn’t come upstairs until four a.m., reeking of scotch and knocking the suitcase off the dresser. He pulled his shoes and pants and shirt off clumsily, and climbed into bed beside her, where she had been lying awake for hours, watching the red neon minutes click by on the alarm clock. She wanted his arms around her, an apology, but she knew she wouldn’t get it, and it was no use fighting with him when he was drunk.
He switched on the TV—some stupid Adam Sandler movie at top volume. Her heart sped up, with the familiar mix of sadness and exhilaration that preceded a fight. She rolled over and faced him.
“Turn that down, please,” she said coolly.
“It’s not that loud,” he said.
“I was sleeping.”
“You made an ass of me tonight,” he said. “Why’d you have to go and do that?”
“You never told me that you used to do cocaine,” she said. “I was kind of in shock.”
“I used to do a lot of stuff before I knew you,” he said.
“Oh? Like what?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“You said you’d never tried drugs,” she said, feeling like a naïve child in an after-school special.
“Well, I guess I lied. One more thing for you to hate about me.”
His tone was so indifferent that she began to cry.
“Do you do it anymore?” she asked.
“Jesus Christ, Maggie, lay off,” he said. Then he softened a bit. “I haven’t done it in years.”
“When was the last time?”
“God, I can’t even remember,” he said. “Come on. I love you. Why are you being like this?”
“And what was all that about the golf clubs and the CDs? Did you commit insurance fraud? I don’t understand it, because obviously you didn’t need the money.”
“Damn it, Maggie, are you a fucking undercover cop, or what?” he yelled. “Didn’t you ever do anything stupid or crazy when you were twenty-two years old?”
The answer, as they both knew, was no.
He switched the TV off and threw the clicker to the floor.
“I want you to go in the morning,” he said. “I’ve had enough. I’ll drop you off at the train first thing. I’ll get a ride back.”
They had been planning to stay two more nights, to visit his