He’s the groom? The man in the hot tub is Gary? Even though he stands by Lila’s side, she can’t picture it. She can’t see him speeding in a BMW on his way to the Disney castle. She can only imagine him in the hot tub, so resigned, so solitary, so unconnected to anything else in the universe except for Phoebe and his beard.
But maybe that’s the trick night performs. Darkens everybody, highlights the nothingness around them. Maybe in the dark, everyone seems more alone than they are. Because he is clearly not alone. He is holding Lila’s hand. He is putting his arm around his daughter. He is standing tall in front of a handsome sailboat.
“Hello,” Phoebe says.
She suddenly doesn’t know what else to say. The tension between them feels so palpable to Phoebe, so embarrassing, but nobody else seems to notice. Marla starts slathering Juice in sunscreen. Suz starts asking one of the men if he got the orders to stock the boat with Lila’s favorite drink, which she keeps calling a Vacation in a Cup.
“Phoebe is a good friend,” Lila says to Gary.
“Is that so?” Gary asks.
If Phoebe is being honest, she has no idea if she and Lila are friends. No idea what it means to be a friend. She’s forgotten what it’s supposed to feel like. Mia was the last good friend she made in her adult life. So what does Phoebe know?
“And here I thought I met all your friends,” Gary adds.
“Well, here’s one more,” Phoebe says, and sticks out her hand.
“The more the merrier,” Gary says, and shakes it.
He isn’t going to acknowledge it, and so it is confirmed. Had everything been normal between them, he would have acknowledged that they already met. He would have said, Oh, how funny, I met Phoebe in the hot tub! But he doesn’t say anything like that, which makes Phoebe feel like their meeting was remarkable. Like when Phoebe used to say, “Mia is so beautiful” to her husband, and he would say, “Yes, Mia is a good laugh,” when what he really meant to say was: I want to fuck Mia.
“We already—” Phoebe is in the middle of saying when Juice screams.
“My dog is dead!” Juice shouts. She immediately starts crying, and Phoebe is shocked to see her transform from sullen teen into crying child in a matter of seconds.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Gary says.
Gary kneels down to become Juice’s size. In that one swift motion, Gary is no longer the man in the hot tub. He is no longer the groom. He is just a dad wearing white sneakers. Probably orthopedic. Phoebe can see their years of history, the way Gary must have held Juice after Wendy’s funeral. The meals he made her in the lonely afternoons. And is that what made him want to die? Losing his wife?
But then Gary stands up, puts his arm around Lila, and becomes the groom again, addressing his crowd.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “It’s just a virtual dog.”
“It’s not just a virtual dog!” Juice shouts. She holds up the green plastic circle for all to see. “My mom gave her to me. Her name is Human Princess.”
The people are silenced either by the mention of the dead wife or the fact that the dog’s name is Human Princess. Lila does not speak. Marla does not speak. Not even Suz speaks. Nobody knows what to say to the crying child about the dead mother, except for Gary’s father.
“I told you to get the girl a real dog,” Gary’s father says, but this is not the right thing to say.
“Dad,” Gary warns at the same time that Juice shouts, “It’s real to me!”
Phoebe can see the wedding people blankly stare at Juice the same way her therapist stared at her when she told him Harry was sick—as if he wanted to care, but he just couldn’t, because who cares? It’s a cat. “And I know it’s just a cat,” Phoebe went on. “But Harry was with us that whole time we were married. Harry was there for us. And now he’s just going to slowly die?” And yet she could see that the therapist didn’t understand the horror of this.
“How did Human Princess die?” Phoebe asks.
Phoebe is starting to wonder if this is why she is here, to fill the silences between the wedding people that they don’t know how to fill, to ask the questions nobody can bring themselves to ask. Phoebe has nothing to lose here. She is not part of this family. She is not part of anything anymore. She is free in a way none of them are, so she kneels down and looks directly at the girl, as if it’s her from many years ago.
“Lung cancer,” Juice says.
“Since when do virtual dogs get cancer?” Gary’s father whispers loud enough to hear.
“Apparently, Dad, it happens.”
“Are you sure you didn’t drop it in the water, though?” Marla asks.
“No!” Juice says. “She just was in my hand and then she … died of cancer.”
“My cat died of cancer, too,” Phoebe says. What she would have given to have Matt there with her when she found Harry—to have anybody with her yesterday morning helping her figure out what to do. She extends her hand to Juice. “Come on. We’ll have a funeral for her on the boat.”
Juice nods. Suz and Nat look horrified. Lila just looks out at the water.
Suz takes a deep breath, puts on a smile, claps her hands, and says, “Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m ready for a Vacation in a Cup.”
“Let’s get on this boat!” the other man shouts. He leans forward to shake Phoebe’s hand. “I’m Jim, Gary’s brother-in-law.”
“Phoebe,” she says.
Jim holds her hand for a moment too long—like maybe he’s checking for a ring, and maybe Lila is right. Maybe Jim really is always hitting on everyone. Even Phoebe.
“Very nice to meet you,” Jim says.
“You, too,” Phoebe says.
Jim lets go and takes a sip out of a bottle called Muscle Milk. Lila smooths out her shirt and adjusts her sunglasses.
“Okay,” the bride says, taking the groom’s hand. “Let’s get on this boat.”
They all sit against the sides of the narrow sailboat. The captain tells them not to lean too far back. “The boat will tip,” he says.
