Like Glass

A Short Story

People are throwing rice. Eighty-two of them. Eighty-three people are in attendance. I’m at the bar at the back of the strand-light lit patio of the Regal, drinking expensive whisky. Open bar. That Michael Fulton is a nerdy looking fella, and though his tux is real nice it would seem good tailoring is impossible with his slight frame, but he’s rich. Hence the open bar and the quality thereof. Kate did good for herself. She’s beaming and crying and everyone is happy. Eighty-two of them, anyway.

I knock another back. She looks my way. She’s beautiful. I see so much of her mother in her and for some reason I can’t pin down, that pisses me off and I take another swig. Bitter. Then smooth.

We lock eyes. Hers are bleary but with joyfulness. She smiles. I think I’ll be sick. How I love her. My little Katie. She hates it if I call her Katie now but she’ll never not be my little girl. I’m so proud and also guilty and maybe a little drunk and for a moment I think I just might make the tally of happy people eighty-three. I suppose it would be eighty-five counting Michael and little Katie, who is now Mrs. Kate Fulton. Where did it all go? The time…

They’re all dancing now. The young ones. A few of us geezers too. The first dance came and went, like seemingly everything else, and I think it was lovely, but it’s already consigned to the blurry archives of memory, and there are a good number of things that I think were lovely and maybe were not, but I’m sure that their first dance was. I know she was smiling. I know I was drinking. The more things change…

The bartender asks me if I’d like another and I hold up my hand to say “no”, even though I want one. I can’t be getting fully blotto at my daughter’s wedding.

Rita’s widower weaves his way to me and takes the stool on my right. We shake hands.

“Kenneth,” he says.

“Brandt.”

What a fucking stupid name. Nice guy though. He was good for Rita after I left. Had to leave? It’s how I’d always thought of it but I guess nobody had a gun to my head.

I’m sure Katie has some concealed sadness about her mom not being at the wedding. Or maybe the sheer joy of anticipation of a beautiful life ahead has for a moment buried the memory of her mother along with the casket. I don’t know why, but when I flew in yesterday I went and put flowers on Rita’s grave. I don’t know whether there was anything like love between us at the end of our marriage but there was once love there and maybe there is an eternity in those moments that outlasts the later ugliness. Or maybe I’m a sentimental old man trying to soothe a guilty conscience. Whatever the reason, I brought the flowers. It was the right thing to do. And nobody saw. It was for me. And for her.

“She looks beautiful,” Brandt says.

“She does.”

“Thank you, Ken.”

“You’re welcome.”

He’s talking about me letting him walk Katie down the aisle. I know Katie and I have a bond that can never be broken. I’m her dad. But Brandt was there in the house when I was gone and he’s a good guy and I know he loves her, even if it’s a different kind, or at least degree.

“I hope it wasn’t hurtful,” he offers.

“What? No. Not at all. You’re like a dad to her too.”

“Yeah,” he says, exhaling forcefully, a weird sigh I can’t read.

“Thanks for putting up for the food too.”

“It’s really fine, Brandt.”

I made a killing in business over the years. Real estate and some other boring shit. Brandt is an electrician. Salt of the earth blue-collar guy. Hard worker but he couldn’t have bought close to ninety people a fancy meal at a grand hotel. I can and did and was happy to do it. Michael Fulton, Esq., lawyer wunderkind to the stars, paid for the rest. A first generation millionaire and waifish dork, but by all I can tell a good guy too. Kate has done well for herself. She has good men around her. And she’s got her dear old dad. The latter fella pondering breaking the recently erected dam on the flow of liquor from the barkeep.

“Well,” he says, rising and straightening his jacket. “Enjoy your night, Ken. Congratulations.”

“You too, you too.”

We shake. He’s a good guy.

The party continues apace. The dancing and the laughing. Somehow I have another full glass I can’t remember ordering. The shining bride is heading my way at last.

I stand. There are tears in my eyes and a sour rock in my stomach. My hands are shaking a little and I’m nervous and I can’t process why any of that is happening.

“Oh, Katie,” I say.

She blushes and grins and does an ironic curtsy and says “Hi, dad,” and I am destroyed.

“You look beautiful, honey.”

“Thanks.”

We hug. I pull away and hold her shoulders and take her in and I have a forlorn flash of a similar day with a girl called Rita Halley and I’m awash in some melancholy, ecstatic glow.

We sit.

“Thanks for coming, dad.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world, my love.”

“I know. All the same, thanks.”

“Drink?” I ask.

“Sure.”

I wave and the bartender brings her a flute of champagne.

“Where’s Jennifer?” she asks.

“We split up.”

“I’m sorry, dad.”

“It’s okay, baby.”

“Is it?” she asks, cutting right through me.

“I don’t know,” I say. I take another drink.

We sit for a moment with a silence between us, though the party is loud and happy. The band is playing some funk nonsense and people are grooving and it couldn’t be more at odds with how I feel right now.

“Your mother would have been so happy seeing you today,” I say and immediately regret it. I don’t know why I brought Rita up. Such a sad memory to throw at her. All the endings. Of her parents together, of her mother altogether.

“Thanks, dad,” she says and seems to mean it. She doesn’t look sad. Her irrepressible, I pray permanent but know better, wedding-smile turns my heart to jelly.

I don’t know what to say. I say something dumb and maybe mean but I don’t mean it that way. I’m just talking, saying whatever booze-induced nonsense pops into my head.

“Michael is a small guy, isn’t he?”

“Really, dad. What a thing to say.”

“I’m sorry, honey.”

“Do you ever get tired of saying that?” she says, pouting now.

“What?”

“Saying sorry.”

“Only when I don’t need to and I say it anyway.”

“Is that often?”

“I don’t know.”

Silence again. Between us I mean, the party goes on. Without me. As it always does. But I guess I’ve always excused myself from it rather than been excluded. I hope…

“He has a big heart,” Kate says after a moment. “That’s what matters.”

“You’re right,” I say weakly, inadequately. “You’re a smart girl, Katie.”

“Dad.”

“Sorry. Kate. Mrs. Fulton.”

With the second name I raise my glass in ironic toast and drink. She scoffs, but mildly, no malice in it. Just a knowing gesture. A painful but not unfair appraisal of the totality of her dad. She knows me. She knows so much.

Then she says something else and as I hear it I want to die.

“And he stays.”

“Honey…”

“No. I shouldn’t say it that way, dad. Now I’m sorry. I know it was how it had to be. And yet…”

“I never left you, Katie.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Of course not. I was always there. Damn near every weekend.”

“Damn near…” she says and stares into her glass.

“Baby…”

“It’s okay, dad. I do love you.”

“I know. And I love you, sweetheart.”

“I know,” she says. “Thanks.”

And then my pride cannot let things be.

“I never left you, Katie. I would never leave you.”

“That’s what you think. How you see it. I know that.”

“I was always there,” I say and I don’t even know what I mean.

“You left mom.”

“That’s different…”

“Is it?” she says.

And for a moment, as fleeting as them all, I know that when it ended with Rita, some way of being with Katie ended too. Not all of it. I’d always be her dad. She’d always be my little girl. But some part of Katie and me disappeared when I left.

“I love you, dad,” she says and stands and kisses my forehead. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“I love you too, honey. Congratulations.”

She lifts the corners of her mouth. And waves and heads back to her husband.

I go out behind the bar, down some steps behind a big boulder and look out at the desert sky. The stars are without number. Beautiful and lost in a swirl of time gone by, remnants of explosions and fire and chaos traveling through the blur of memory to leave only beauty behind.

I breathe in the brisk night air. Drain my glass.

Then I fling my arm and let go the glass and it shatters on the boulder.

I cry.

Some things are like glass. You break them, maybe not knowing why or what you’re even doing, and then there’s nothing you can do to put them back together.