Ten Years of Public Breakups, Then He Ran After My Bus novel · Chapter 3 of 40

Chapter 3: The Napkin

At the Galley the friends and the parents hand them a napkin of rules that will keep them civil until Paulie's June wedding.

The Galley was packed for the festival Sunday.

There was one empty booth in the back with a RESERVED sign on it in Paulie's handwriting.

My mother and Linwood Dyer sat in the booth next to it, sharing a plate of home fries.

They saw me come in.

My mother put down her fork, looked at the shirt I'd put on, and said something in French to Linwood.

Linwood nodded sadly and said, in English, "I know, Yvette."

I had put the shirt on inside out, and I fixed it behind the napkin dispenser.

Eben came in two minutes after me, in the same clean jeans.

He did not look at me.

He sat on the far side of the booth and put his cap on the table.

He had a bruise coming up on his collarbone where I had bitten him.

I looked at the menu so I wouldn't look at the bruise.

"Okay," said Paulie, across from me.

She had a Sharpie, a stack of napkins and the face of a woman who had been up since four.

Gordie sat next to her with a coffee he wasn't drinking, rubbing the back of his neck.

"I'm going to say this once," Paulie said. "In front of your parents, because you two never listen to anybody else."

"Paulie," I said.

"Ten."

She said it flat.

"Ten breakups in ten years, and I have been at nine of them. I was at the hayride. I was at your cousin's wedding. I held your hair at the fireworks barge."

"That was the barge's fault," Eben said.

"Don't talk. Last March was our engagement party, at my mother's house, and the two of you went at it in her kitchen in front of both my grandmothers, and my mother still doesn't have a kettle."

"I paid for the kettle," Eben said.

"It was a family kettle."

"Paulie," Gordie said gently.

"No. I'm almost done." She put the Sharpie down and looked at us. "We're getting married on June twentieth at the Grange hall in Owls Head. Bernie, you're my maid of honor. Eben, you're Gordie's best man."

"I know," I said.

"I need the two of you at the front of that room without a scene."

"You'll get it."

"I won't get it unless you sign something." She slid a napkin across the table. "I wrote it out."

The napkin said TRUCE CLAUSE across the top in capital letters, and under that, four lines.

I read them out loud, because Eben wouldn't.

"One. No public scenes before June twentieth."

"Two. Nothing in bed."

I stopped reading.

My mother was looking at the ceiling with great concentration, and Linwood was stirring a coffee that had no sugar in it.

"We heard you from the pier," Gordie said, in a small apologetic voice. "Everybody heard you. The cooker crew gave you a hand."

"They clapped," Paulie said.

I put my forehead down on my hand.

"Three," I read, from behind it. "Civil at the Friday table."

"Four. His days and her days at the Point house, never the same hours."

"That's a house," Eben said. "It's not a kid."

"It's the only thing the two of you have ever finished," said Paulie. "Even though it isn't finished."

That was true, and it was cruel, and she was crying a little as she said it.

"If either of you breaks a rule," she went on, wiping her face with her wrist, "you're out of the wedding party. I'll have my cousin from Lewiston stand up for me, and she can't even carry a tune."

"Is that a threat?" I said.

"It's a promise from a woman with a veil on order."

My mother cleared her throat.

"Bernadette Marie," she said. "Sign the napkin."

"Ma."

"I have not been embarrassed at a wedding in fifty-eight years. Sign."

Nobody argued.

"I'll take away your key to my freezer," she added.

That one worked on me.

I signed.

Eben took the Sharpie, read the whole napkin with his jaw working, and signed under me in a hard slanting hand.

Linwood leaned across the aisle and read it upside down.

"Number two's going to be a problem," he said mildly.

"Dad."

"I'm just saying. I've got a heart condition, not a head condition."

Gordie made a sound into his coffee that was almost a laugh.

Paulie reached across the table and took my hand and Eben's hand and put them side by side on the napkin, and for one second, the knuckle of his little finger rested against mine.

I felt it like a burn.

I took my hand back.

"There's one more thing," Gordie said.

He looked embarrassed.

"There's the Board."

"Gordie," I said. "Do not."

"It's behind the pool table," he said. "It's been up since the third one. Number ten went up at two o'clock yesterday afternoon."

"You put a tally mark up for us?" Eben said.

"It's got labels. The Text. The Hayride. The Cousin's Wedding. The Fireworks Barge. The Waiting Room."

Eben's face closed like a door at the last one, and I didn't look at him.

"The Ice Storm," Gordie said, ticking them off. "Mother's Day. The Bus. The Engagement Party. Yesterday's is going up as The Microphone."

"We have a pool," Paulie said, wiping her face again. "It's mine and Gordie's anniversary money. I'm sorry. It is also very popular."

"What are the odds?" my mother asked with interest.

"Ma."

"I'm only asking."

"Eight to five that they break a rule by Labor Day," said Gordie.

"Take that bet," Linwood said to my mother.

"I will not take that bet. He's my daughter's ex-boyfriend, and I have standards."

"Just now you said you'd pay a dollar," Linwood said.

"I said it quietly."

I took my coffee and drank half of it scalding, because there was nothing else to do with my face.

When I looked up, Eben was looking at me over his cup.

He looked away at once.

We walked out into the glare at eight o'clock, the festival Sunday just starting, steam already rising off the cooker, and stood a polite distance apart at the curb.

Paulie and Gordie had gone off holding hands, whispering.

My mother had gone off holding Linwood's elbow.

"Rule four," Eben said, in a low voice, to the street. "His days, her days."

"I know what it says."

"The roofer comes to the Point house at six tomorrow. He's got a window and then it rains for a week. It's my day," he said.

"Your day is Wednesday. Mine is Monday."

"The roofer's mine, Cyr. I hired him," he said.

"It's my roof."

"It's our roof." His voice stayed even. "And you work nights. Sleep."

"I'll be there at six," I said.

He put his cap on and pulled the brim down.

"Rule four," he said.

"Go to hell."

"Rule one," said Eben Dyer, and for the first time all weekend he almost smiled. "Nothing public."

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