Chapter 12: Twisted Logic
(Posts for the foreseeable future may
be a bit brief and slapdash. Proofreading? Revising? What are those?! Sincere apologies—it’s been a heck of a few months
and the Commissioner is digging her way out of them.)
WhatisthisIdon’teven…
::takes a deep breath:: Let me try this again.
In
many ways, almost nothing happens in this chapter, and yet it’s almost 20 pages
and this post is (probably) going to be long.
Actual
actions that occur in this chapter:
- Joe asks Emma why she’s calling his brother
- Emma eventually explains
- Sex
- Tiffany Lamour inexplicably shows up at the house
- Joe’s interview with Tiffany happens off stage
- Emma oversees the rehearsal dinner cleanup
- Tiffany shows up to give a tape of the interview to Emma and Joe
- Sex
- Emma’s mother worries about the interview and hints that Joe might have slept with Tiffany
- Joe helps his sister bring wedding cakes to the Inn
Okay,
that’s actually quite a few actions, but none of them are what you’d call
particularly exiting in and of themselves. And that’s actually how the whole
chapter feels… mundane tasks take more time than they ought and an awful lot of
(digital) ink is spilled attempting what I’m pretty sure is just misdirection.
Let’s
take it step by step, shall we? (Oh, we shall. We shall.)
- Joe asks Emma why she’s calling his brother
- Emma eventually explains
Joe
decides that Emma is guilty, regarding this phone call. She explains that she
was calling Mac in a professional capacity since she had an idea about who
might be behind the thefts.
“And you didn’t tell me?” Joe
groused, aware this would have been good news had he not had to drag it out of
her, and then only after catching her confiding in someone else. Who, by the
way, was not her husband! (158).
First,
if you’re her husband and she’s not confiding in you, then that whole last bit
up there, Mr Joe Hart, hockey player extraordinaire, is redundant.
Second,
and more importantly, this book seems to suggest that while the two of them (re)married
for convenience, to let gossip die down, that it’s magically a marriage where
all Traditional Beliefs have to stand—and these two haven’t even discussed what
those beliefs would be for them. I see far less reason for Emma to confide in
Joe than for her to not confide in
Joe.
Emma
eventually admits that she thinks the Thieving Mastermind is the Subplot Groom.
Joe thinks her logic is sound, but is far less interested in getting his
priceless and sentimental hockey memorabilia returned than he is hurt that Emma
didn’t tell him any of this of her own volition. Emma tries to explain that
since she could be wrong, she didn’t want to raise Joe’s hopes, and that she wanted
to protect him.
Joe frowned, not sure where to start,
she was so out of line here. “Emma—” (159).
Seriously?
What year is this book written in? VCRs notwithstanding, I feel like Joe is
trying to be a dad from a 1950s sitcom. (In which case he needs to get a
haircut like Keith Yandle… said the FHL Commissioner in a joke that no one who
reads this blog is likely to get.)
 |
| We miss you, Yandle, and your tic of pulling up your pants before every faceoff. (Photo by the FHL Commissioner, 2013) |
- Sex
Emma
points out that she actually knows the rest of Joe’s family better than she
knows him, at this point, what with practically all of them working at the
Wedding Inn, or stopping by constantly. It creeps me out, however, that during
this conversation when Emma is enumerating each of Joe’s siblings and whether
she knows them well, Joe is getting turned on. I wish I were kidding, but by
the time they get to referencing Joe’s veterinarian brother (who I forgot
existed), Joe is aroused and Emma is undressing.
I’m
an only child, but I still think that talking about my siblings would be very
much passion destroying.
To
assuage Joe’s temper-tantrum*, Emma tells him he’s the one in her heart. Later
in the chapter, twice in fact, the text will tell us that Joe doesn’t know if
Emma loves him, because she’s never said it. But it seems to me that she did
just say it, right there, even without the “three little words.” Eejit.
The
next morning (after more sex), Emma leaves for the rehearsal day of the Subplot
Wedding after being reminded that that evening is also Joe’s interview with
Tiffany Lamour, or, as Emma has starting thinking about her, “the female
piranha” (161).
 |
| Tell me you wouldn't watch a show with this guy for an interviewer? |
- Tiffany Lamour inexplicably shows up at the house
Think
of the devil female piranha and she shows up, apparently, but only after
Emma has left for the day.
Tiffany’s
behavior is (presumably, deliberately) inexplicable. She starts out wheedling,
in order to get into the house. When Joe says he won’t answer any personal questions
while on her show that night, she gets aggressive and rude. Then she tries to
seduce him by letting “her knees fall open a tad too far” but Joe doesn’t care
about her panties. (Seriously. He says
so.)
She
remains aggressive and says she’ll ask whatever she damn well pleases during
the show and that she can cut the film to make it look like anything she wants.
Joe threatens her, saying he’ll just ask her questions, too, like apparently
that she was involved in some other, never-before-mentioned athlete’s divorce
and almost had to go to court (for unspecified reasons) over it. Last, Tiffany
seems to deflate when Joe tells her that he’s bringing his attorney with him to
the interview.
“Fine,” Tiffany said grudgingly at
last… “We’ll do it your way, Joe, as always” (164).
When
has there ever been a previous for this to be an always? Dammit, book, get it
together.
Tiffany
gives up and asks to use the restroom. Joe doesn’t want to let her (rude, but
understandable) but allows it, then she disappears.
- Joe’s interview with Tiffany happens off stage
- Emma oversees the rehearsal dinner cleanup
The
only notable thing that happens here is that because Emma remains uncertain if
the Subplot Groom is the hockey memorabilia theft culprit, she likens being the
wedding planner for that day’s rehearsal and next day’s ceremony to “presiding
over a wedding on the deck of the Titanic”
(165). I know the Titanic disaster
happened 100+ years ago, but that still seems a little callous in comparison. I
mean, the worst thing that could happen at this Carolina wedding (using the
book’s plot suggestion) is that it turns out that the Subplot Groom is broke
and turned to a life of Really Stupid Crime, potentially in league with Tiffany
Lamour, and perhaps he gets arrested during the ceremony. On the Titanic, 1500 people drowned or died of
exposure. It’s just a bit different. Plus, Emma is describing a feeling of
uncertainty and dread—feelings that the passengers of the Titanic, including any (nonexistent) wedding planners, wouldn’t
have had since most of them were convinced that the ship was unsinkable and
also they weren’t supposed to be so far north that there would still be
icebergs in their path in April.
(Weirdly,
I’m currently listening to an audiobook about the Lusitania. Which has nothing to do with anything other than also
being a giant passenger ship that sank a few years after the Titanic. And actually, the Lusitania would have made a better
metaphor here, since it was sailing during war time and the Germans actually published
warnings in the newspapers saying, “Hey, watch out Americans, ‘cause if we can,
we’re going to torpedo the Lusitania,
with our nifty new-fangled submarines!” which could have engendered a sense of
dread, unlike on the Titanic.
Icebergs weren’t polite enough to take out advertisements.)
- Tiffany shows up to give a tape of the interview to Emma and Joe
Yes,
I do mean tape, by the way. They use a VCR.
The
couple takes the tape home and Emma wants to watch it, but Joe wants sex. Emma
worries that the tape contains something other than the interview, like perhaps
a sex tape or something.
They
compromise in that they start to watch it but get distracted into sex before
the tape is over. They don’t see anything to worry them (during the tape. I
mean, I presume also not during the sex, but that part isn’t explicitly in the
text.)
- Sex
Also
a boring conversation about the fact that Joe isn’t shaving because he thinks
the beard is bringing him luck with Emma.
·
Emma’s mother worries about the interview
and hints that Joe might have slept with Tiffany
Emma’s
mother shows up at the Wedding Inn purely to ask Emma what’s going on; Tiffany
gave Emma’s parents a copy of the tape as well and they watched all of it. It
contains absolutely nothing about Joe’s private life, which worries Emma’s
mother. First, she’s concerned (and hints at) that Joe either paid off Tiffany
or slept with her in order to keep her from asking personal questions. Of
course this makes Emma worry about this possibility, too, as well as accuse her
mother of sending Joe to Tiffany as a kind of morality test.
I
don’t like any of the relationships
in this book. They’re not healthy.
Second, Emma’s mother is miffed that this
interview won’t put to rest any of the gossip. Which, fair enough, but I also
have to believe that the gossip just frankly isn’t that big of a deal. It’s a
fluff piece at best. I mean, there are athletes (NHL included) who have been
accused (or proven) to have beaten people who are still playing and are still
popular. Somehow I think one semi-illicit-but-not-really relationship and secret-accidental
marriage is a blip on the radar. But this is apparently an important moment for
Emma, because she stands up to her mother and says that she and Joe are going
to (from now on, I suppose) keep their private lives private.
So
much for that whole Hockey Wife = Role Model = Tell All thing that these two
had going on last chapter.
- Joe helps his sister bring wedding cakes to the Inn
And
there’s some conversation about how his sister doesn’t support her son’s desire
to play hockey, which makes Joe feel sad because… I’m not sure. Possibly because
he feels bad for the kid, but more likely it’s because he feels it demeans his
own career choices and reminds him that his own mother didn’t support him the
way he’d have liked her to. It’s not spelled out, but that’s the subtext I get,
and it’s actually slightly more interesting than just about anything else going
on in this book. Joe also asks his sister how he should seduce Emma that night,
which I can’t decide if it’s creepy (that’s his sister he’s asking) or sweet
(at least he’s not just insisting Emma do things this time.)
Then
the wedding starts and the chapter ends. Only 25 pages left in this novel. I
sure hope we find out who the thief is and what Tiffany’s fiendish plan might
be…
--------------------------
*DIGRESSION
TIME! I keep wanting to write that Joe is “butthurt” over this stupidity,
because as a term it conveys such petulance and childishness. But I don’t like
the term because of its references to sodomy and thus the suggestion that gay penetrative
sex is somehow ‘bad’ and thus worthy of being used as a pejorative. Then I considered
“panties in a bunch” and “hissyfit”, but of course both of those have feminine conotations.
The humor in the former in partly about the gendered term ‘panties’ and thus
suggests that only women, or worse, men being called feminine, would have the
emotional response in question. The latter, hissyfit, is from the term “hysterical”
which was a very specifically female gendered term used by medical
practitioners who thought that only women could have specific kinds of emotional,
“nervous” complaints, at one point thought to be caused by the uterus wandering
about the woman’s body and at various times in history “treated” by stimulating
a woman to orgasm.
Language
is hard, you guys. And if you’re asking why connotations or language matter,
you might be hanging out in the wrong blog.
