When I couldn’t avoid it any longer I stood up and told a story about when Saskia was six and her dog got sick. When I sat back down everyone at my table was crying. Caledonia reached across and grabbed my hand. We had matching bracelets. After that people spoke to me and the elongated men asked me to dance. Saskia hugged me and said she loved me and we all threw birdseed at them when they left. They’d changed out of their wedding clothes and looked like they were going off to work in an insurance office. Someone told me they were catching a flight to Athens. I got a ride back to the church from a guy I’d had a crush on in high school. He pulled up next to my car and I could see him deciding if he had the energy to try something, but I slid out before he came to a conclusion.

On the way back to Vermont I thought about words and how, if you put a few of them in the right order, a three-minute story about a girl and her dog can get people to forget all the ways you’ve disappointed them.

It was close to two in the morning when I got home and all the lights were still on in our apartment. Mandy was having one of her episodes. I hadn’t seen one yet. Wes had told me that every so often she drank herself into a sort of trance. I had laughed and said I couldn’t wait, but he’d said it wasn’t funny. She was pacing in the kitchen. Wes was at the table, which was covered with all sorts of bottles and glasses and mugs.

“Go straight back to your room,” he told me. “Let me deal with her.”

Mandy’s head snapped toward me. She stopped moving. Her face was all rearranged, like this toy Wes and I once had with the outline of a man’s face and a bunch of metals filings you moved around with a magnetic pencil underneath to alter his features and make him happy or sad or mad. Mandy was mad.

“There she is, Little Miss Scribbler. Little Miss History of the Fucking World.”

“Here I am.” I was sober and very tired.

“Dressed like a fairy princess.”

I tried to curtsy but the bridesmaid’s dress was too narrow. I looked like a misshapen purple mermaid.

Wes made a slight flourish with his finger for me to keep moving to my back room.

She saw him. She was too close to the drawer with the knives for my liking. But she said, “Baby, I love you so much.” Her voice was empty of any emotion, like the identical oarsmen giving their toasts at the country club. “So much.” She moved to where he was, stiffly now, as if her knees had never healed.