Chapter 24: By Any Other Name

Saturday, September 6, 1986

We picked up tickets for Huey Lewis in the morning. They looked to be pretty good seats. At least, they were good for G. Rollie White. One can only ask so much, after all.

We started getting ready for the party around two. With how we kept the house, it really wasn’t that much work. Most of it was making sure chairs were set up outside, doing some quick final cleaning, and getting soda chilled, iced tea and water into dispensers, snacks into serving containers, condiments and servingware put out, and the meat ready to grill.

Guests started arriving just after four. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Darla and Hank were the first to join us. Their being a couple would be news to some of the other guests. Hopefully, no one would worry about my being upset!

Amy made a point of hugging Hank, then talking with Darla for a bit. They had certainly never been ‘rivals’ or any such thing, but they had come into my life as serious dating partners at essentially the same time. Those relationships had taken very different paths, but both felt like they were what they should be.

Others trickled in, in ones and twos, or sometimes more, and we had a decent crowd by five.

I was in the kitchen with Angie, Paige, and Amy when Jas came in and said, “Lynn’s here.”

“Gotta go say hello,” I said, smiling.

Angie and Paige looked at each other. By itself, it didn’t seem out of place, though I figured Amy might note things being slightly different from other guests. But Lynn was new, while nearly everyone else was a longer-term friend.

I went up to the door to meet Lynn. I said hello to her, and she introduced me to Harry, her boyfriend. Mel, who was in the living room, made a face neither Lynn nor Harry could have seen. I figured I would hear what that was about soon enough.

As I turned back from looking at Mel, I heard a gasp from the direction of the kitchen. I looked, and Angie was on the floor, eyes closed, with Paige crouching down, looking concerned. Amy was trying to help, too.

Paige called out, “She ... she fainted! I think she’s okay! I caught her. She didn’t hit her head.”

As I ran over to help, it finally dawned on me that there were other nicknames for ‘Carolyn’. If I was right, I was pretty sure Angie had missed that, too, until the evidence was right in front of her.

Oh. My. God.

Again.

Paige, Amy, and I got Angie settled. We didn’t have smelling salts, but Angie’s eyes fluttered open within a couple of minutes. Others had gathered around, but they cleared out when they saw that Angie was recovering.

The first thing she said was, “It’s...”

I said, “I get it.”

Paige looked at me, then Angie. Then she looked out and spotted Lynn.

“Wait ... um...?”

Angie nodded, while Amy looked confused.

I looked at Amy and said, “Lynn looks very much like someone she used to know. It’s complicated, and ... let’s talk later, okay?”

Clearly, this was likely to be one of those things. That day with Laura ran through my head. Another ‘girl from the past’ had just metaphorically lobbed a bomb into one of my relationships, and I expected there would be consequences. At least we’d talked about those consequences ahead of time!

Amy said, “Of course. I can wait.”

She hesitated, then said, “I’ll go see if Cammie needs any help. If you are okay now, anyway?”

I was nearly certain the subtext was, “You need to talk, and you can’t do it in front of me.”

“We’re okay, I think,” Paige said.

Amy left, and Paige whispered, “Carrie?”

“That’s her,” Angie said. “Younger. Fewer lines. Same woman.”

“Holy shit!” Paige said.

“How ... how did we not see this coming?” Angie said, shaking her head.

“Because the idea is absurd?” I said, shaking mine, too. “Until it’s not?”

“I ... wait. What’s her boyfriend’s name?”

“Harry Thompson,” I said.

“God dammit!” Angie hissed out, quietly. “Her last name was Thompson. Which...”

She didn’t have to finish it. In theory, at least, Harry was going to have a very, very bad day in a few years when Lynn — or Carrie — finally lost patience with him. I’d gotten the impression he had not had an easy exit from life.

Cammie bustled in, with Jas and Mel joining shortly.

“What happened?” Cammie said, softly.

“Lynn is Carrie,” I said.

Cammie blinked, trying to parse it. Then her jaw dropped open.

“Oh, my God!” she whispered.

Mel made a face again.

“Great!” she said sarcastically. “Her boyfriend is the jerk who hit on me. And ... a lot of other people. I guess that hints at eventual domestic violence.”

“Yeah,” Angie muttered. “Certainly might have something to do with him taking a frying pan to the face, eventually.”

Then she got up, took a deep breath, and said, “Right! We need to make this a normal party. There’s a lot to talk about! But we can’t do it now, or a whole lot of people are going to hear things they don’t need to hear. We’re going with what Paige said. She looks like someone I knew. Someone in Illinois. Vague hand-waving about something to do with my mother having her ... breakdown. Or whatever you call it.”

“Can do,” I said, with the others agreeing.

Angie hugged Paige tightly.

“This matters, but it changes nothing. I love you incredibly much. And I always will.”

Paige sniffled, hugging back.

“Thanks, honey! I don’t think I needed that. But I kinda maybe did, too.”

They kissed while the rest of us got things going again.

Only about eight people had seen Angie’s faint. Of those, the most important was Lynn herself, and she seemed entirely satisfied with the explanation that Sharon had had a friend who looked like Lynn and was not a nice person. Lynn, of course, had no idea of Angie’s past (or was amazing at pretending she didn’t), but ‘estranged, neglectful mother’ and ‘questionable living conditions’ goes a long way in creating an explanation people will accept without asking problematic questions.

Harry barely seemed to notice. It might be my dislike for him, but it felt to me like he was mostly interested in scoping out the other women at the party, all while making sure Lynn didn’t realize he was doing exactly that. I did notice him avoiding Mel.

Interestingly, I saw a brief exchange between him and Amy later. She said very little, then walked away. He stared at her after that. He wasn’t exactly glaring, but it was close. I would have to ask about that.

Within half an hour, no one seemed to remember Angie’s distress. More people arrived, and we were back to having just another party.

I was working the grill when Cal and Andy came in, accompanied by Kelsey Cooper and Valerie Hutchins, their official girlfriends. Johnny Holland, who’d come to one of our previous parties, was with them, too, and he’d brought a date named Monica.

Two other players came as well, neither with a date. One, a really big guy, turned out to be Larry Kelm, another linebacker. Along with Johnny, that meant two of the Aggies’ starting linebackers were at our little party. I doubted Cal would start this year, but I expected him to play quite a bit.

The other big guy — not quite as big — was Rod Bernstein, the starting tight end (who also played as a running back sometimes). He was one of Andy’s mentors, and gave us a bit more representation on the offensive side of the team.