The Remembrance of Things Past--Part One

Nothing seemed real until Ryan received the invitation in the mail. The crisp, cream colored envelope, the black embossed words in their elegant calligraphy—reading through the invitation, Ryan could feel his insides tie up into a knot. He thought his mother was kidding when she said that Chelsea and Michael were going to get married. He was sure that she was just pulling his leg, seeing ifs he could irritate him in record time during their weekly telephone chats.

“I’m not kidding,” his mother said. “They’re getting married in the spring.”

“Chelsea Thomas and Michael Martin,” Ryan said. “You’re such a liar.”

His mother sighed. “Fine. Don’t believe me. But you’ll probably be getting an invitation in the mail in a few days.”

Sure enough, his mother was right. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. Chelsea was supposed to marry him, Michael was supposed to marry Ryan’s wife, Nikki, and Chelsea and Michael were supposed to forever get under each other’s skin until one or the other had to leave the room while Nikki made off hand comments with the sole purpose of hurting Chelsea’s feelings. That’s how they worked. It’d been like that since the four met up in kindergarten.

“What’s that?” Nikki asked.

He didn’t even hear her come in the door. With their five year old son, David, right behind her, Ryan handed over the invitation to Nikki. Getting down to David’s level, he took David’s backpack set it in the corner. “How was school?”

“It was awesome!” he cried. “We drawed pictures and played at recess!”

“Really!” Ryan exclaimed. “Well, what did you draw?”

“A volcano!” David shouted.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Nikki yelled. “If you’re even thinking that we’re going to go to this, well, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Ryan inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. “David,” he said first. “Why don’t you go play with your trains for awhile while Mommy and I talk.”

“Talk, or fight?” David asked.

“Talk,” Ryan said.

“Is Mommy gonna win if you fight?”

Ryan sighed. “Probably.” David laughed, running off to the back of their apartment to play with his favorite toys. Following Nikki into the kitchen, he could see the back of her ears turning red. They only did that when she was really mad. He watched her pace around for a minute as he sat down at the table. Her heavy sighs of frustration weren’t lost on him as he started to speak. “Look—”

“No, you look,” Nikki said. “We got married in a courthouse, Ryan. A goddamn court house!”

“We could’ve gotten married in a church.”

“No, we couldn’t! Don’t you remember how pissed our parents were?”

That was a stupid question. Of course he remembered how mad they were. Furious and enraged would be better words to describe the situation. He remembered the way his mother cried when he told her, how she looked at him in disbelief. And his father—his father didn’t even know what to say. Nikki and Chelsea were famous in their small town, and only because they were twins. Fraternal, with their differences varying as much as their personalities, everyone knew them as the Thomas Twins. Chelsea was the good twin. She was valedictorian of her class, a star athlete, and was polite to everyone. Nikki was “the headache,” as Ryan had heard her father refer to so many times before. Guys wanted to date her and the girls lived to hate her, while secretly wishing to be her. The tall, blond hair, blue eyed stereotype wasn’t lost on Nikki while Chelsea blended into crowds. She wasn’t as tall, wasn’t as gregarious, and wasn’t a fan of making people miserable because it was, if you asked Nikki, easy to do.

Nikki dated Michael because he was the guy to date, next to Ryan. Ryan knew that Nikki used to have a crush on him that developed in middle school, but Ryan didn’t pursue it. He’d always been drawn to Chelsea. It was hard to ignore the jealousy that Nikki displayed towards Chelsea, and for Ryan to watch Chelsea sit back and listen to the continuous line of insults that Nikki spit at her on a daily basis. And with Michael constantly picking at her, with the line between joking and being mean an invisible one at best, Ryan was left to believe that Chelsea had to be a saint because she never retaliated or got angry. If she did get upset, she would go off by herself. Ryan only saw her cry once or twice.

“And I can’t even believe that you would consider going!” Nikki yelled, her voice snapping Ryan back to reality. “I thought we’d finally moved past this whole Chelsea thing!”

“They’re our friends!” Ryan exclaimed. “Chelsea’s your sister for crying out loud!”

“That’s a weak excuse.”

“Family isn’t a weak excuse, Nikki. She’s your sister.”

“Well, it’s better than yours. You think that if you show up, she’ll cancel the whole damn thing, but she won’t. Just because I don’t talk to my family doesn’t mean I don’t talk to my friends,” Nikki said. “Michael and Chelsea are the talk of the town. Everyone thinks they’re the perfect couple.”

Ryan sighed. “I don’t want to stop the wedding, Nikki. I’m married to you. I love you.”

Nikki rolled her eyes. He watched her walk to the refrigerator, keeping his mouth shut as she poked around in the fridge and then up in the freezer before closing both doors. She looked at him, pursing her lips together. “Why can’t you just be happy with us? I mean, I know it got started off in a bad way, but we’ve made it this far.”

“I never said I wasn’t happy, Nikki.”

“You don’t have to say it.”

Ryan dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. Fighting with Nikki drained more energy from him than work and night class combined. He used to try to avoid arguing with her all together, but it only seemed to make everything worse so he gave up all together. Ryan came to the realization a while back that he was going to lose either way.

He stood up from the table and approached her. When she looked away, Ryan wrapped his arms around her, even though Nikki made no attempt to do the same. “I’m happy,” he whispered in her ear.

She looked at him, staring straight into his eyes. “Then tell me you don’t wish that things were different.”

Ryan went to answer, but he couldn’t make the words come out of his mouth.

Nikki forced herself out of his embrace and walked back to the freezer. Jerking the door open, she pulled out two freezer packs of meat. “Do you want pork chops or chicken for dinner?” she asked, changing the subject completely.

“Does it matter?”

“If it did, I wouldn’t be asking.”

He sighed. “Chicken’s fine.”