“You look tired,” Joy told him. “Was it a rough flight?”

“Not particularly,” he said. “The sleeping thing’s gotten worse.” He actually hadn’t meant to tell her that, but three decades’ worth of intimacy was a hard habit to break. Was he trying to elicit sympathy?

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“It’s been a little better the last couple weeks,” he lied. Actually it was worse, but having received the sympathy he’d elicited he now felt unworthy of it.

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“I’ve got an appointment as soon as I get back,” he said, another lie. How many more would he have to tell to balance out the first true statement?

“It’s been a rough year,” she said, quickly adding, “Your mother, I mean,” lest he conclude she meant their being apart.

That first heart attack, back in August, had done serious damage, and the surgery necessary to repair it, the heart specialist had explained, was not without risk, especially for a woman her age. Without the operation she’d have only a year or two, maybe as little as six months. The upside of the surgery, assuming she didn’t suffer a stroke on the operating table, was significant. Years, they were talking, maybe a decade. “That idiot must think I’m enjoying my life, if he imagines I want another decade,” she told Griffin when they were alone. He tried to speak, but couldn’t. “That’s that, then,” she said after a moment’s silence, meeting his eye with what looked for all the world like satisfaction, as if this were the very news he’d been hoping for.

“It’s okay,” he said now, trying to help Joy out. “I knew what you meant.”

“Where’s…?”

“In the trunk,” Griffin admitted, feeling himself flush.

Only when Joy regarded him as if he’d lost his mind did he realize she wasn’t asking about the whereabouts of his mother’s ashes. “Oh, you mean… sorry,” he said, flushing even deeper now. “She’s back at the inn.”

“You could’ve brought her to the dinner, Jack.”

And, incredibly, he again thought she was talking about his mother. Jesus! Was it going to be like this all night? Would he misread everything anybody said? “She thought it’d be easier on everybody if she skipped the rehearsal.”

Joy regarded him doubtfully. “Are you going to be all right?”

“Sure,” he said, feeling anything but.

“A couple of things, before we go in,” she said.

“Okay.”

“Daddy’s in a wheelchair now.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“He fell last month. He says it’s temporary, but Dot says no.”

“Dot?”

“Jack. He remarried. You know that.”

“I forgot, I guess.” Though it all came back to him now. Joy’s sisters had been furious. Marriage? At their father’s advanced age? It was beyond ridiculous. Joy had had to talk them out of boycotting the wedding.

“Also, he doesn’t make sense all the time.”

“That’s okay, neither do I,” Griffin said. Obviously.

“He does all right in familiar surroundings, but-”

“I’ll be aware.”

“Just so you know-regarding us?-I’ve warned everybody to be on their best behavior. They’ve all agreed to be civil.”

Back in the fall, when Joy’s family found out they’d separated and were probably headed for divorce, emotions had run high. Her twin brothers, Jared and Jason, had promised to do Griffin bodily harm when next they met. One of them (their voices, too, were identical) had somehow gotten his cell number and called him up, drunk, in the middle of the night. “I always knew you were a fucking asshole,” he said without bothering to identify himself.

“Jeez,” said Griffin, who at three in the morning was watching an old movie. By this time he wasn’t living with Tommy anymore but rather in his own tiny efficiency apartment. Most nights he didn’t even pull the bed out of the sofa. “Always? I wish you’d said something.”

“You better hope I never see you again,” the caller continued, music and barroom laughter in the background.

Griffin knew it had to be either Jared or Jason, but which? “Oh, I do, Jason,” he said, taking a flier.

“It’s not Jason, it’s Jared.”

“Yeah, but same deal.”

The other man was quiet for a minute. “What did my sister ever do to you? Why are you treating her like this?”

“Listen, Jared-”

“Because you don’t fucking deserve her.”

“I agree.”

“Yeah, well… you just better hope I never see you again,” he repeated. Griffin ’s ready concurrence had apparently thrown him off track, and he was now trying to get back on as best he could.

“Where are you these days? Just so I know where not to go.”

“I’m stationed in Honolulu.”

“Okay, then. That’s easy enough.”

“I got a leave coming up, though. How about I fly to L.A. and kick your ass?”

“I’m going to hang up now, Jared.”

“You’re probably thinking I don’t know where you live, but I can find out. Don’t think I can’t.”

“I live on Bellwood Terrace. The Caprice. Apartment E- 217.”

“I have my ways.”

“Good night, Jared.”

He hadn’t heard from either twin since, but was happy to hear they’d agreed to a truce during the wedding.

“I told them if they didn’t chill, they couldn’t come, and they both promised,” Joy went on. “I just hope you can tell them apart when you see them, because it pisses them both off when people get it wrong. Especially now that Jason’s out of the service and has some hair.”

“I’ll try to remember.”

“There’ll be lots of kids. Try not to look like you hate them.”

Yes, by all means, his mother chimed in, startling him. Pretend.

Shut up, Mom.

“And you know about the ceremony, right? That there’s a minister? Nothing in your face, but God will be invoked.”

“Which?”

The Protestant one. The god of gated communities and domino theories. Jesus. With a J, like the rest of them.

Best to ignore her, Griffin decided. Telling her to shut up had never worked in life, either. “You don’t have to worry about me, Joy. I’ll behave.”

“I know you will,” she said. “I just…”

“What?”

“Well, I guess I wish we could’ve found a way to…”

“Keep it together one more year?”

“But we didn’t, did we?”

“My fault, not yours.”

She looked off into the distance, her eyes filling, then gathered herself. “There’s one question I have to ask.”

“Shoot.”

She took his hand lightly. “Are you going to be able to write these checks? Tonight and tomorrow?”

“I said I would.” Though in truth he was a little worried. He’d taken twenty-five K out of his retirement, hoping that would do the trick and trying not to panic as the guest list grew. Last week he’d taken out another ten just to be sure.

“You also said you weren’t working.”

What he’d actually said was that writing assignments had been few and far between since he and Tommy had been fired off the cable picture, and of course there was his mother. After the first heart attack, he’d returned to Indiana several times, trying to make his visits coincide with her major transitions-from the hospital to a rehab facility, then back home with hospice volunteers and, finally, to the hospice wing of the hospital and full nursing care.

In January he’d picked up a couple of film-school classes, adjunct status, so the pay was for shit, but it was something. He had a new agent, Tommy’s, but all she’d come up with was a quickie dialogue rewrite. This he’d done on his own. Since he’d moved out of Tommy’s place, they’d seen little of each other. They occasionally met for a drink, but Tommy always made some excuse to call it an early night. Griffin knew his old friend was at a loss to understand why Griffin didn’t just tuck his tail between his legs and go home and beg Joy’s forgiveness, as husbands in his circumstance invariably did, if they had any brains. “You want to end up alone?” he asked one night. “Is that it?” No, it wasn’t, but Griffin was hard-pressed to articulate what it was, exactly.