The Might Have Been by Joe Schuster Page A

said.
    “Probably not,” he said.
    She nodded. “One of us is wise,” she said. Inexplicably, she began crying. Not in a way that someone at another table would notice, but silently, her eyes closed, tears welling at their edges, streaking her cheeks with mascara. “I’ve made a royal botch.”
    “How so?”
    “Have you been paying attention?” she said, fiercely. “Hello? Maid of honor? Fancy dress? Fifty-dollar hairdo? Orchid?” She plucked the flower from behind her ear, regarded it a moment and then crumpled it, letting the petals fall onto her plate, where they darkened as they absorbed the blood and juices from her steak.
    “I …” he began, although he had no idea what to say. He had never been good with women who cried. His mother. The girls he dated. He had always felt helpless in the face of them, even when he was the cause of their grief: girls he no longer wanted to see, girls who misinterpreted his attentions at parties, when they saw the prospectof a capital “R” relationship after only an hour together and all he was seeing was sex.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her wrist. “You’ve landed one crazy, crazy broad here.”
    A busboy came by to collect their plates and the waitress wheeled a dessert cart to their table: a half-dozen cakes and some sort of torte.
    “What’s the worst thing you have on the cart?” the woman said.
    “Worst?” the waitress asked.
    “Most wicked. Dessert that most says ‘I am off this diet I’ve been on for three months to fit into this dress.’ That sort of thing.”
    “I like the triple chocolate cheesecake,” the waitress said, holding up a plate that bore a thick slice of the dessert, a chocolate cake with some kind of chocolate crumb crust, chocolate syrup dribbled across it in a pattern of overlapping arcs.
    “Done,” Estelle said.
    “Nothing for me,” Edward Everett said.
    The waitress wheeled the cart off. Estelle picked up her wineglass although it was essentially empty and drained the last few drops by tilting it above her open mouth and letting them fall onto her tongue. “I don’t think they’re serving triple chocolate cheesecake at the wedding. I think I won this round.”
    The waitress brought the cake to the table and set it in front of Estelle, who took up the dessert fork, cut a small bite from the edge of the cake and put it into her mouth, closing her eyes and giving a look that suggested ecstasy. “That is so much better,” she said when she had swallowed the bite. “You should have some.”
    “No, really.”
    “I insist.” She cut a slightly larger bite from the cake and held it across the table toward him, cupping one hand beneath the fork. Tentatively, he took it. The sweetness filled his head.
    “Ooh,” he said.
    “Yes, ooh,” she said. She removed the butter patens from a small dish of them, stacking the slivers neatly on the table, cut a piece of the cake, laid it into the dish and slid it toward him.
    “Estelle,” someone said from across the restaurant. “Estelle.”
    “Jesus,” she said. “Jesus Jesus Jesus Mary and Joseph.”
    A tall, bony older woman in a blue sequined dress was pushing her way through the crowd of patrons waiting at the entrance.
    “Madam, you’ll—” the hostess said.
    “My daughter,” the woman said, pointing toward Edward Everett and Estelle.
    The hostess let her pass. Like Estelle, the older woman had an orchid nestled behind one ear. Her floor-length dress wrapped her so tightly that she could take only small steps. Partway across the dining room, she gathered some of the fabric in her hands and pulled the dress until it extended to just slightly below her knees, allowing her to walk more quickly.
    “Estelle,” she said again when she reached the table, whispering through clenched teeth. “This is unacceptable.”
    “It’s not one of our better days, is it, Mother?” Estelle said. She took a forkful of the cake and made a show of