>>Chapter Seven

Doll eyes, clouded by dreamy silver from the soul, long blonde lashes glistening, blinking in seconded-intervals as if almost slow motion, they just wander, fluttering like butterflies and never landing on any one of the people that provide their captivated attention towards them.

Doe eyes, just like those doll eyes but wide with worry, blinking too much and searching for some sort of reassurance, they run, almost racing back and forth, back and forth to catch a glimpse of guarantee in everything that is suddenly uncertain in front of her.

Electric blue eyes, shocking and reaching out for some sort of reaction, they just want to meet the doll eyes, to grasp their leaking silvery soul that seems to be drifting away and away, just one second to pull her back to him, for a connection.

Laser beams that burn red-hot and threaten to tear apart this whole building – AAGGGHHHHHH!

What? No, I don’t expect you to take me seriously but honestly, consider this, after much brainwashing from Sara, her family seems to be in between the species of soul-sucking vampires or brain-eating robots – don’t forget the laser eyes!

They blink on perfect intervals, blink blink pause, blink blink pause, blink blink pause and gawk. And it’s like a rhythmic match-up – blink blink blink pause blink pause blink – well, I think you get the idea. It’s kind of scary, the gawking especially. Hawks eyes, baby. Mr. Klein’s were greenish and I hadn’t realized it was possible but they look warm – in comparison of Mrs. Klein’s rocks for eyes.

I look down into the shiny fragile plate that lay in front of me. The lights reflect for it to catch my face and I see my eyes. Magnified, widened, they look almost like doe eyes, cocoa brown that shines because of the reflection of dancing candle lights.

I try to see what they’re trying to say like every pair of eyes around the table. But to me, they say, what the hell are you supposed to – what are you doing here anyway! Not exactly furious, not exactly panic, not exactly despair… but maybe torn in each, hidden behind the thin layer of ice that is composure.

I lift them and shoot a look towards the doll eyes of Sara. She meets mine, telling me not to panic with a little shrug. And she opens her mouth; words come that have me want to my fist to meet her face instead, “It’s no big deal, darl. We should come out of the dark. No point hiding our love. I’m sure my family wouldn’t understand anyway, so let’s just get this over with.”

The next person to speak up, surprisingly, is neither Mr. nor Mrs. Klein.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! You’re telling me I wouldn’t have known if my girlfriend was a lesbian?” Carter’s eyes are wide with disbelief but sparkle with humor.

I see it. He knows Sara well – or at least, knew her well. He sees her mischief. He’s on my side! My heart dances in rejoice.

Caprice gives him a little nudge. “Carter – language.”

Then only do I notice that the gay talk has attracted some amount of attention by the surrounding tables. It’s the kind of reactions I’m used to – the ones I see when I crash weddings: outrage, shock, humor and some unreadable pink poker faces.

He gives a sideways half nod in acknowledgement. “Oh, alright then – sexually confused!” he laughed in a rather bewildered tone.

Sara’s left eyebrow shoots up, a picture of indignation. “I was always bi.”

Oh, the composure she manages in absolute falsehood.

Here’s a point in fact: Sara is homophobic. She doesn’t think the people are wrong or have any problem with the things they do, the feelings they feel – she is simply scared of them. I think it has something to do with how she walked into Sal and Dan who live from the 4^th flour a couple years back. She’d had a strange suspicion they want to assassinate her since then, because at that time, they haven’t exactly come out of the dark yet and Sara walking in on them sort of had them pressed for time.

Carter doesn’t hold back this time, letting a loud, appreciative laugh ring out, deep and throaty. It clicks in my head, almost audible, and I remember how Sara always described the laugh of her dream guy. I look at her, for some sort of reaction. There is no clear reaction, though her cheeks have reddened remarkably below the makeup.

“Right, so you were always bi and I never noticed?” he chuckles.

Sara sniffs indignantly, her face raised, nose up. “Yes, there are rather many things you didn’t notice about me.”

He raises an eyebrow, as if being presented with a challenge.

“Now, Sara, silly, you can’t possibly be serious!” Caprice interjects, fluttering a hand around and making ‘psshh’ sounds.

“Yes, Sara, how foolish of you.” Mrs. Klein has a raised eyebrow as well, but it’s so incredibly poised it looks plastered and clearly, clearly slightly sarcastic.

“Yes, foolish,” Sara repeats, chewing on the word, with an impatient sigh from above her wine glass and takes another sip.

“Now, dear,” Mr. Klein reaches out a consoling hand to Mrs. Klein. “Very well, they are young and –” he pauses, of course the subject would be an awkward one, for a man such as himself.

“Mr. Klein,” I speak up. The glare Sara shoots me silences me immediately but as Mr. Klein continues to look at me expectantly, I open my mouth again, exchanging looks with Sara and then Carter, who looks amused, as if he knows exactly what I have to say.

A couple of waiters show up on spot of time, laying down chowders and soups with breadsticks and appetizers. Sara takes the opportunity to shoot me another one of her talk-and-you’ll-DIE glares and I wonder secretly whether she’d inherited the laser eyes from her parents, mother in specific.

I agilely pick up my spoon and shovel soup into my mouth.

“Bread, Una, dear?” Caprice offers, with her hand like a flight attendant – the proper term would be stewardess, please note sarcasm – over the basket of breadsticks.

I respond by opening my mouth to respond and have soup literally drip out of it. Uh-oh.

Mrs. Klein’s expression is torn between disgust and horror while Mr. Klein looks only slightly distressed and continued to pat his forehead with a silk handkerchief. The worst part is that I didn’t react to those reactions. I just sit there, elbow up, spoon in midair and mouth gaping with soup dribbling down my chin.

Classy.

A series of guffaws break out interrupted by choking noises next to me, finally followed by snorts and loud appreciative laughter. Carter, I should’ve known.

I drop the spoon. Ohmigod. The uncanny clank sound it makes has everyone around our table turn and stare again. There’s even a moment of awkward silence where chattering and forks and spoons freeze.

A waiter swoops in and picks up the spoon, another hands me a new one and they nod to me. The younger one gives me a little nod, with a twinkle in his hazel eyes that only I can see. I have a feeling he enjoys this. Must be once in a blue moon some hanky-pank pathetic excuse of a woman walks in a restaurant like this and doesn’t try to act posh.

Carter has his hands on his sides, as if trying to hold in the laughs which are now making his face turn into the color of a lobster. I quickly reach for the napkin and dab at my chin, shooting him dirty looks. He meets my eyes without hesitance. I feel a shock down the back of my spine. Laughing eyes. He has laughing eyes, twinkling ones.

“I want a man who has laughing eyes. That type’s never afraid to laugh… even if he does have lousy humor,” the Sara in my flash-back smiled and said.

And lousy humor he has. So I just look at him through narrowed eyes, signifying his lameness. He catches the “lame, lame, lame” mocking signals I send him, vibrating in air waves, enveloping him. He responds by giving me a super cheeky smile then swiftly turning back to face forward, back dead straight and very pointedly ignoring me as he picks up his spoon.

Mr. Klein clears his throat, fixing his tie. Sara looks uninterested. Caprice fidgets and looks like she’s trying hard. Mrs. Klein has a poker face of death. And Carter continues his cheeky outlook.

I calm my heart and usher the blood in my face to blush its way down. Think. Think what happened before this disaster.

“Oh, yes, thank you, Caprice,” I speak as charmingly as a grown woman that has just dribbled soup on herself could. I take a breadstick from the basket that the flight attendant Caprice’s hand had abandoned for her wine glass.

I watch as she steadily gulped it. She hasn’t heard me. But as she feels my eyes on her, she looks up. “Oh, yes?”

It takes a second for her to realize she’s missed the moment for conversation. But I continue to look at her intently. The red in her face inches up readily but I suppose that had something to do with the wine… which she has just finished another glass of.

I shoot a look to Sara and she catches it. I question Caprice’s drinking. She shrugs, signifying how she wouldn’t know.

“Caprice?”

“Hmm?” She looks up quickly this time. Her fourth glass half finished now. And who knows how many she’s already had before Sara and I showed up. The apples of her cheeks blend a deeper shade of red. She puts down her wine glass.

“The night just started,” I hint, eyes on the wine glass.

She nods, blushing genuinely. “Oh, yes. Just…” her voice trails off.

Carter takes the glass away. “No more for you,” he says rather affectionately.

My Sara radars beep sharply. But I save my eyes for Caprice’s sheepish smile. She looks like a child at the moment. Some little girl lost in a wedding where she didn’t want to be, or at prom dateless, or at a camp in the woods when you knew nothing about it and had no friends. She looks like she doesn’t want to be here.

Then it hits me. Of course she doesn’t want to be here. Getting married to sister’s ex-boyfriend/best friend person and having to sit through this gruesome dinner of fallen apart, forcefully patched up family members, I think again, the poor woman. Even so, no one seems to be paying much attention to her, not Mr. or Mrs. Klein. She’s almost invisible, and that’s incredibly unbelievable. How could a woman of her eminence have turned to glass a couple of nights by?

I look back at Sara. Is this the effect she has on her elder sister?

I look back to Caprice. She’s shaken, glugging down wine and unclenching and clenching her fist repeatedly. Her hair suddenly looks less shiny, her face less clear, her eyes less bright and her posture less properly held. Gone is her rare stature for a person of her height. Gone is her sparkle. She just looks…

She hiccoughs, and the sentence finishes in my head – drunk.

And the question that has never popped in my head before, both because I’ve never been presented the chance and the fact that I wouldn’t have considered it in my position, pops up, bold and terrifying, “How scary was it to get married?”

And then I pause. When are they getting married anyway?

I want very badly to ask the question. It itches, the curiosity in the back of my mind. But I know that if I speak now of this matter, Sara might turn into the Red Queen of Alice’s Wonderland. I’ve always fancied myself for more of the Mad-hatter… actually, Sara fits that one too. And the Rabbit who’s always late would probably be that kid Adrian. In this case, the Red Queen would remain to be the redheaded woman – perfect! – his mother. I’d probably be Alice then. Lost and barging in on tea parties – oops, did I say tea parties? I mean weddings. Har har.

“Una? UNA.”

My mind pictures of colorful giant mushrooms and a talking Cheshire cat disperses in a disappointingly normal setting of candles and silverware and tiny dull-looking brown mushrooms drowned in cream. I lift my eyes.

Sara, who’d been calling me, gives me eyes like daggers. What, I ask internally, defensive with my mouth opening lopsided and eyes wide, eyebrows pulled together. She responds with narrowing her eyes, and I roll mine.

I feel eyes on me and I see Carter captivated between the silent communication of Sara and I. He meets my eyes and he mutters, “Lesbian lovers, huh?”

One sound and everybody stares. I couldn’t help it, I snorted.

Carter’s face splits into a huge grin. My reaction had affirmed his hope that Sara is in fact not lesbian – whoa, hold up. Hope?

The internal double take brings my eyes back on his face, studying. It sure seems that way. That’s not right… but it can’t be anything else. He is her ex-boyfriend. And I wonder how they ended…

Sara picks up on the question telepathically and makes a face, as if to say that the question is dreaded and probably not to be answered in detail. That only makes me even more curious. Thirsty for answers… a trait of a journalist. I’ll leave those questions for later tonight, when she’s drunk. I note her third glass of wine. Huh, the sisters sure like their alcohol.

The rest of the meal goes by silently, and I swear, to God, I could’ve fallen asleep between the salads and steaks. No one speaks. And I’m the only one looking up, eyes like table tennis balls in an international match, searching for some strand of silent communication. But nobody met eyes, at all.

“Dessert?” Caprice finally speaks after Mrs. Klein finally, last to lay down her fork and knife, her steak half finished somehow.

I’ve been counting the glasses of wine she and everyone else took. Bottles came and bottles went, emptied, emptied, emptied… Six bottles in a meal. Sara has drunk about eight glasses, Caprice ten, both Carter and Mrs. Klein about five, and Mr. Klein four. I’ve barely finished my third glass.

Caprice seems to be holding up though, considering I’d have been drunk out of my mind if I drank as much as she’s done. Her cheeks are cherry red, her eyes glazed over with the same red, but they focus alright. However, I can’t seem to tell what she’s focusing on exactly…

They glaze over the waiter that stands readily beside her, and taking a moment longer than usual, moves back to the people around the table. Her smile wavers, though it’s seemingly expectant. I start to wonder if she has a drinking problem when she picks up her glass again.

“Tiramisu,” Sara utters. I raise an eyebrow and open my mouth – Sara never orders Tiramisu.

“And cobbler,” Carter chuckles.

It’s happening, it’s happening! Their eyes are going to meet and like some broken, slow dial-up connection, it’ll finally be reestablished – and then Caprice cuts in hastily.

“Dessert wine,” she gasps.

I look at her, bewildered. She looks like she’s about to go into hyperventilation. Flustered and red all around her face with crumpled brow and tight mouthed, she’s on the edge of falling apart. And I don’t know if it’s sympathy or just a sense of righteousness, I call off the wine order.

“Please, just get a coffee for her.”

The waiter, I notice, is the one who winked at me when I magically turned into Cindeclutzerella. He meets my eyes and looks back at Caprice for a moment, then nods. “What about you?”

“Apple pie,” Sara chimes. Then it comes right in line after the sing-song voice, the dreaded giggle. She’s drunk. Officially drunk.

The waiter looks amused and raises an eyebrow at me. I tilt my head sideways, signifying an okay.

“Coffees for us both, please,” Mrs. Klein’s shrill voice rings. Sara hiccoughs, then her forefinger and thumb catches her earlobe and she acts if she’s digging her ear. Mrs. Klein’s sharp eyes catch it and I spot the flared nostrils. Sara just hiccoughs again and goes back to sipping her wine.

Carter’s snorting into his wine, though he seems to think he’s doing an okay job keeping it in – I see bubbles. Mr. Klein loosens his tie as a faded red edges up his neck. Caprice hiccoughs and her eyes’ focus muddles before she does an odd impression of a dog shaking its head.

I rub my neck awkwardly. The drunken family before me is certainly unique, brain-smudging indeed. Sara’s gone. That leaves me with the rest who probably have intention of making connection with the thief of the little one in the family. But I doubt they thought of like that. I’m just another ‘temptation’ out there that extracts Sara’s ‘inner rebellion’ and causes her to wreak havoc to her liking. It often seems awfully so. And I don’t really understand that. At least their daughter has a stable job, is considerably successful, beautiful, talented, and intelligent and never crashed – or even felt the need to crash – a single wedding in her life.

She just doesn’t fit in the family. And what kind of family is that anyway? Superficially perfect? The only thing that set her apart is that she’s real.

Caprice, on the other hand… I see now, just how hard she tries to please her parents. It’s almost as if she picked up the burden and responsibilities of two daughters instead of one, all the disappointments and expectations. Like she lunged herself forward to be vulnerable to her parents demands when Sara faded out of the family, to chase after unreasonableness and catch silhouettes of their image of perfection. Her hair is exactly how you’d expect her parents would want their daughter’s hair to be. Her posture is expert practice, so are her expressions and her way of speaking. And her career as a lawyer?

Maybe it wasn’t instinct or impulse that’s led her through her life, it’s a carefully laid out map from her parents’ ideas and words forming over years. It’s almost like a sentence, a law. And she lives to fulfill it, not a single dewdrop of fight in her. Obedient, hardworking, forever a good daughter – I wonder if she ever thought about what she wanted in life herself.

A small light in my head clicks. What about Carter? How does Carter fit into this? How does an ex-boyfriend who seems to still like the younger sister end up with the other one?

When I look over to him, he’s prepared to gargle the wine.

My eyes bulge. Ohmigod, another drunkie. I kick him from under the table. Caprice winces instead, then hiccoughs again. Carter puts down his wine glass and looks around like a lost child who just woke up.

My eyes widen even more so. Er… I don’t wanna know what’s happening under the table, lalalalalalala –

Carter slurs, “Capreee, what’sho shoe doing her?” He reaches down and picks up a heel, raising it high.

“Gimme that,” Caprice snaps hastily, snatching it away from him, blushing furiously.

Oh. She was just trying to get her heel. There I thought it was adult-footsie. Har har.

Mrs. Klein clucks disapprovingly, causing her drunken children’s head to turn to her jerkily. Like a mother hen. Cold turkey. Literally. Ice cold, frozen for eternity and would bounce if you dropped her from the 15^th floor, despite how skinny she is. Why do I know that a frozen turkey would bounce if you dropped it from the 15^th floor, you ask? Don’t ask.

Mr. Klein looks miserable, I note. How’d he end up with the Turkey?

Then I look to Sara who seems to’ve decided to be bored now. Her elbow’s on the table and her chin in her palm, she looks utterly uninterested with her eyes wandering back and forth from table to table. How’d the Cold Turkey end up with children like her and Caprice?

Caprice, after fastening her heel back on, began gnawing on the inside of her cheek. Maybe she does need a dessert after all. And then I decide when she sticks out her tongue and begins trying to lick her nose, that she needs the coffee even worse.

I kick her from under the table, this time glancing underneath it to make sure I aim right. She hoots. Everyone pauses. People from the next table look around curiously to see where that sound came from whereas the ones who’re sure it came from out table stares strangely at us individually at a time. I look away in what I presume to be a very obvious manner because when the funny waiter passes by, he coughs.

I shoot him a look from the corner of my eye and he chuckles. Charming, isn’t he?

But truth is, he is. The dress code of the restaurant of course has extracted all individuality from each and every employee. His black hair is swept back, suave, face completely clean shaven, neither tan nor fair, and with dark, twinkly eyes.

I scan for his nametag to send him flowers as thanks for making an entertaining night for me – thought I’m pretty sure he’s the one who should do that because I’ve been the highlight of his night, no doubt. His eyes sparkle as the thought crosses my mind and I begin to think he can read my mind, blushing to the color of Caprice’s drunken face, quickly directing my attention back to the people around the miserable table.

Caprice is now ducking under the table dressing repeatedly, with an expression of confusion and frustration. Sort of like a child who expects to find out how magic happened when it was a cheap trick. I stare hard at her, waiting for her to notice.

But she doesn’t. And after a while, my eyes’re about to fall out of their sockets.

I resist the urge to stab them with my fingers and dig them out with vigorous rubbing. Sara trained me well – whenever my hand reaches up, she slaps it “because of my mascara”. Yeah, that’s what it’s about.

I look at her. And she’s got her pupils on her nose that’s wrinkled up with her eyebrows together as if she’s hard at work. What is she doing?

My phone rings. I jump. I panic for half a moment while Caprice’s face surfaces, neck stretched, like a dog that caught a whiff of something, Sara’s mouth shows a “grr” expression and Mrs. Klein reattaches her laser eyes because of my rudeness.

“I’m gonna get this.” And I rush off.

I pause on the way to ask for the directions to the ladies. A quiet waiter points it out. I trip a couple times because of the jerkiness in my walk as I head over. As soon as I push open the door, without looking at the caller ID, I pick up.

“Hello,” I choke breathlessly.

There’s a pause. “Miss Carton?”

It’s a man’s voice. I pause and wonder who it is. “Yes, Una Carton.”

“This is Principal Rock,” he answers the question in my head with a disapproving tone. “May I ask where you are?”

“Oh! Er, yes, yes. I sent in a letter. I’m taking a couple days off because…”

“You see, your letter never stated why you were going to be absent,” he interjects.

“Er…” I stall when the words of “my best friend’s ex-boyfriend’s marrying her sister” didn’t sound very reasonable in my head. I cough, “er… well, remember the lovely young lady that came in with me the other day, for the interview?”

I hear his speculation hanging in the silence he leaves for half a moment. “Yes, Miss Klein.”

“Um, well…” Oh, no, I’m going to lose another job! And this one isn’t even real!

I suppose I don’t like jobs much. The idea of going in and out of the same place from Monday to Friday and working with children who I heard seem to little reincarnations of demons these days from early in the morning till night with paperwork and homework to mark – imagine giving homework! I hated homework. I suppose teaching Art is alright. But then, I am subsequently required to stand in as other teacher’s replacements.

“Miss Carton?”

Ooh, yes, excuse!

My nerves start to trip over each other and I can imagine the cartoon drawings of them, like little round thingies of cells going into panic mode and screaming in little chipmunk voices – wait, what? I should be using my brain for better things now. C’mon… something…

“She’s in the hospital!” I gasp.

Uh-oh.

“Oh?” he sounds a little sarcastic.

“Yes.” I clear my throat and focus on trying to sound worn out. “She’s um, a bit… well, she got into a car accident. She’s pretty banged up –” banged up? BANGED UP? What kind of language is this! “– and her family’s very far away –” in Hawaii to be precise, and so am I “– so I’ve had to take care of her.”

I hear him sigh on the other side. “Yes? Well, when will she be recovering?”

“She’s… gone into a coma!”

I had to say, I had to say it! I’ve already been absent for 5 days and I’m going to have to stay another 5, at the very least, but I’m guessing Sara’d be running wild after this and that means another 5 days.

“Yes, so you wouldn’t know when she’s waking up, would you?” Skepticism spouts like bubbles in his voice.

The lump in my throat doubles its size at every word of lie I speak. “Well.” Garble. “I,” – grouch and long pause – “don’t know.”

He gives another long devastated sigh. “Are you having second thoughts about the job?”

Am I?