If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him…

“I think it’s… unlikely,” Elizabeth assured him.

A hasty round of introductions told them that the guests were all members of the college English department or professors from neighboring colleges or local artists. Elizabeth tried to keep track of the names and faces as they gathered around while her mother plowed through the traditional sound-bite resumes of such gatherings. “Bill and Elizabeth, my children-everybody. He’s a lawyer, and she’s a forensic anthropologist, currently unemployed.”

“Mother!”

“But she has a Ph.D. Bill, Elizabeth, I’d like you to meet Megan Holden-McBryde, of the English department. She’s working on feminist critical theory in the works of Jack London, and this is her husband, Skip Holden-McBryde, who is a poet.”

Elizabeth shook hands with the willowy couple in matching running suits. “Ah. A poet,” she murmured, hoping that he was in the dormant phase of the condition.

“Here are Sadie Patton and Annie Graham-Robeson, feminist deconstructionists.” She nodded toward two heavyset women in their early fifties.

“Architects!” said Bill with a happy smile.

There was a brief pause while everyone tried to think of a quick way to explain literary theory on a third-grade level. Simultaneously, everyone gave up. “Something like that, dear,” said his mother, shrugging. “Miriam Malone, a kinetic sculptor. She does the most marvelous things with bathtub toys floating in blue mouthwash. And Tim Burruss, who coaches wrestling. They’re not together-his lover can’t be with us this evening.”

Elizabeth was about to mention her own bereavement-presumptive, when Tim said, “He’s driving a stock car at the speedway tonight. I said, ‘You can break your neck if you want to, but don’t expect me to go and watch.’”

“-And this is Virgil Agnew, who’s in theatre and dance.”

“He’s our token heterosexual,” said Sadie (or possibly Annie).

“I’m in therapy for it, though,” Virgil informed them. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his tweed jacket and frowned at nothing in particular.

Elizabeth ignored Bill’s elbow in her ribs. “Token hetero-wait!” she exclaimed. “I thought you said Megan and Skip were married.”

Megan Holden-McBryde nodded happily. “We are. But actually I am a gay man trapped in a woman’s body. I had past life regression and discovered that I used to be a medical student in turn-of-the-century London. I was a friend of Oscar Wilde. It explained so much.”

Skip put his arm around his spouse’s shoulders. “So we feel that we really count as a gay couple.”

After a short, leaden silence, Annie (or Sadie) remarked to Bill, “I have a son who practices law.”

“You have a son?” Since Bill’s brain was completely occupied in reformatting a mental image of his mother, he was in no condition to think before he spoke.

“Oh, yes. And two grandchildren.”

“Three if you count the step-grandchildren from your third marriage,” her partner observed.

“Third marriage?”

She nodded. “Sadie and I have only been together two years. Between us, we’ve had five husbands.”

“Political lesbians?” asked Elizabeth, who thought she was beginning to get it all sorted out.

“No. That would be D. J. Squires, over by the fireplace, talking to Barnie Slusher, the chemistry professor.” She nodded toward a scowling young woman with close-cropped blonde hair, a leather biker’s outfit, and riding boots. She looked like the title character in a postmodern production of Shaw’s Saint Joan. “D.J. is a feminist historian, and she said that when she realized as an undergraduate that all seductions are a form of rape, and that marriage would mean sleeping with the enemy, she just broke off her engagement to the star quarterback. She contends that she’s never looked back.”

“It has done wonders for her career,” Tim Burruss remarked. “She’ll be one of the youngest tenured professors ever. If she makes it, I mean.”

“She’d better make it,” grunted Sadie. “The university couldn’t afford to fight the discrimination suit she’d bring if they turned her down.”

“And this is Casey,” said Margaret MacPherson, with an air of saving the best for last.

Phyllis Casey, who had just come in from the kitchen, was a small, tanned woman who appeared to be in her late forties, handsome in a well-scrubbed and athletic way. She was wearing a tunic and long skirt of natural linen, and her long hair was woven into a thick braid.

She set down the tray of canapes, and gave Bill and Elizabeth each a hug. “Margaret’s children. So nice to finally meet you.”

Bill kept trying to make eye contact with Elizabeth, but she was studiously avoiding him. “Nice to meet you, too,” he said with an anxious smile.

“It’s a lovely house,” said Elizabeth.

“Yes, it has a lot of space. Margaret and I have turned the spare bedrooms into home offices.”

Before Bill could figure out where the conversation was going next, someone tapped him on the arm.

“Your mother said that you are a lawyer,” said the earnest-looking young woman. She had long, crinkly brown hair, adorned with a white flower over one ear and dangling earrings in the shape of dolphins nose to nose.

“A lawyer. That’s right,” said Bill, with an inward groan. He hoped that the inevitable legal question was going to be one that he could answer with some measure of confidence. He balanced his paper plate on one palm, in case she was the earnest handshaking sort. “And you are…?”

She blushed. “Oh, my name is Miriam Malone. I’m called Miri. I’m from Florida, but I’ve moved up here to teach in the art department. I sculpt. Didn’t your mother mention me? I thought she might have.”

Bill shook his head, wondering if he had time to eat a stuffed mushroom before he had to speak again. He risked it.

“I wanted to consult you, in a general sort of way, about a legal matter. Your mother suggested it, actually. She says you’re a specialist in family law. Would you like to go out into the garden?”

What Bill truly wanted was to stay close to the refreshment table-and to rely upon the adage of safety in numbers. He thought briefly of clutching the piano leg to keep from being dragged away into the silent, threatening garden by this earnest and humorless Amazon, but a glance around at the chattering guests, oblivious to his plight, told him that it was no use. He might as well go bravely to the doom his mother had obviously arranged for him, and get it over with. “Certainly,” he said, feeling like the pig at the luau.

She led him through the kitchen, out the back door, and onto a wooden deck surrounded by scraggly rosebushes. Bill wished he’d had the presence of mind to remember his drink. He leaned against the wooden railing of the deck and gave her his most attentive and professional young-attorney smile. “What can I do for you?”

“I want to get married,” said Miri Malone.

“Where is Bill?” asked Margaret MacPherson. “I’ve hardly seen him since he got here.”

“Mingling, I expect,” said Elizabeth, without any noticeable concern for her missing sibling. “I hope he’s remembering to pass out business cards.”

“Well, perhaps he’s enjoying himself. I think it’s going rather well, don’t you?”

“It is,” said Elizabeth, glancing around the room. “It’s certainly different from the get-togethers you and Dad used to host. All the men would congregate around a televised football game, or else they’d take over the living room and fill it with smoke and loud guffaws.”

Her mother nodded sadly. “Yes, and the women would gather in the kitchen and talk about the children, or the weather, or linoleum-God knows what we talked about. I don’t know that I was listening.”

“Were you unhappy?” asked Elizabeth, surprised at this revisionist account of her childhood. “I thought you all were incredibly boring, but I didn’t know that you minded.”

“Perhaps I didn’t at the time,” said Margaret thoughtfully. “I didn’t have much to compare it with. Men don’t generally talk to women, you know. They simply listen until they can figure out what one sentence will end the discussion. Then they say, ‘Buy it,’ or ‘Take another aspirin,’ or ‘Whatever you decide will be fine, dear.’ That said, they dismiss you from the universe entirely, and go back to the newspaper, or the instant replay, or whatever constitutes reality to them at the moment.”

“And now you have someone who will talk to you?”

“Well… there is always something to talk about in new relationships, so I can’t be sure that things will turn out differently this time, but it’s all very interesting.” She wandered away then, picking up empty glasses and exchanging a word or two with each guest as she passed.