By Louis Kummerer
His name is Antonio, but Krista calls him Tone. She assures me, over the phone, that I’ll like him.
But so far, I don’t like him. He’s smug, arrogant, dripping with the kind of unwarranted self-confidence that only the young can pull off.
The bar is his choice: Frosted-glass front doors with large brass handles; hip-hop music thumping from hidden speakers; bartenders in white shirts and black bow ties—an upscale establishment frequented by twenty-somethings who flaunt their early success as if it were an immutable harbinger of how their lives will turn out.
Without asking what I want, Tone orders for both of us: Glenlivet at $18 a glass. He pays for the drinks with his American Express Platinum Card,and I suspect he does so not because he wants to ingratiate himself with me, but because he wants to make sure I understand that this is the level he lives at, which is different from the level that I live at.
Ordinarily, this would be awkward—me, my daughter’s boyfriend, meeting for the first time, struggling to ignite a conversation. But Tone doesn’t strike me as the type of person who’s given to awkwardness. He seems quite comfortable as he yammers on, completely absorbed in his own self-importance, totally oblivious to my role in the conversation, which consists mostly of me nodding my head and smiling.
He calls me “Sir” in the condescending way that police officers use the term when they pull you over for a traffic violation. “Sir, can I see your license and registration?” “Sir, step out of the vehicle, please.” “Sir, may I have your daughter’s hand in marriage?”
Krista flies in to town to discuss the wedding details with me. She doesn’t bring Tone along.
“Just the two of us,” she says at lunch. “Just like the good old days.”
I’m not sure what she means by the good old days. Sixth grade, the year that Jennifer divorced me and ran off to Seattle, leaving me to raise Krista alone? The uncomfortable crutch I became as Krista struggled through the emotional jungle of adolescence—her first period, her first kiss, her first boyfriend, her first heartbreak? The difficult conversations about puberty, about sex, about friends, about boys, the kinds of conversations that should only occur between a girl and her mother? Those good old days?
“Just so you know,” Krista says, “Mom will be at the wedding.”
Krista tells people that Jennifer and I have reconciled, but what she really means is that she and Jennifer have reconciled. After abandoning Krista during the difficult years, Jennifer has returned to play the supportive mother. Now that the game is won and the trophies are being handed out, she’s back in Krista’s life, and she’s staying with Krista to help plan the wedding.
Jennifer called me a month ago and asked me to send all the photos I had of Krista growing up because she wanted to use them to create a montage for Krista’s wedding. That’s the only contact I’ve had with Jennifer since the divorce. Which, to me, doesn’t feel like a reconciliation.
At the church on the morning of the wedding, the usher seats me next to Jennifer in the front row. She is talking to a couple behind her when I slide into the pew. She briefly interrupts her conversation and turns to kiss me on the cheek, a kiss so light and fleeting that it’s almost as if a fly had landed on my face momentarily and then quickly buzzed away.
“Nice to see you again,” she says with a pasted-on smile. Then she quickly turns back to her conversation with the people behind her.
I walk into the reception hall alone after the wedding. Some of the photos that Jennifer asked me to send are prominently displayed on a large board at the entrance. I stop to look at them: a smiling Krista at her 13th birthday party, gathered with her friends around a cake that I bought at a grocery store bakery; Krista with her girl scout leader, a tall, lanky woman whose name I can’t remember; Krista standing alone with the Grand Canyon in the background; the mother of one of Krista’s friends helping Krista apply makeup before her Junior Prom. I notice that I’m not in any of the pictures on the board, and my first impulse is to assume that Jennifer deliberately excluded me. But I realize that a more likely explanation is that I was always behind the camera, recording Krista’s life, but not really in it.
At the reception dinner, I’m not seated at the wedding table on Krista’s side because that would put me next to Jennifer, which everyone agreed could be problematic. Instead, I’m on the far side of Tone and his parents, an ostensibly unbalanced arrangement that leaves me oddly misplaced, like a dangling participle linked to the wrong subject.
When the father-daughter dance is announced, I slink onto the dance floor, painfully aware that I am not a good dancer. As we begin dancing, Krista senses my stiffness.
“Relax, Dad,” she whispers in my ear, “We’ll get through this.”
Dancing with her now, the most important man in her life for the last time, I realize that what she said pretty much defines her years alone with me. I was the backup player, a substitute just trying to get us through.
When Krista and Tone are about to leave, we guests are each given a small box containing a live butterfly. On cue, we release our butterflies as the newlyweds get into their limousine. Krista doesn’t make eye contact with me as she waves goodbye to the crowd and closes the limousine door. Through the vehicle’s tinted glass windows, I can barely discern the outline of her face.
The limousine pulls away and I find myself alone, stranded amidst a swarm of brightly colored butterflies that flutter around me now like old memories.
* * *
Louis Kummerer is an American writer and a lifelong fan of short stories. His work has been published in New Delta Review, The Brussels Review, Bristol Noir, 10×10 Flash, Grey Sparrow, Yellow Mama, Punk Noir, Micromance, CaféLit, Bright Flash Literary Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Chamber Magazine, Friday Flash Fiction, and 101 Words. He currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona where he works as a contract technical writer. A collection of his stories can be found at louk247-fiction.com.