How I Became a Famous Novelist (25 page)

She so completely bought it that when I was done she rubbed my arm.

“I’m so glad to hear you say that,” she said, “because Polly actually asked me if I thought it was a good idea, to invite you.” She rubbed my arm again. “I told her I thought it was.”

If I’d been telling her the truth, of course, I would’ve told her I thought Polly was a vicious harridan and that while she may have thought she’d outwitted me by landing this James fellow, I’d proved myself the better con artist by writing a bestselling
book
, which was a hard scam to top, and that I was waiting with delicious anticipation to see Polly cringe in defeat on her own wedding day.

As Lucy and I went to sleep that night in the DC Radisson, I was sure that was how it would play out.

But the next morning I saw the Buddhist monks.

Lucy and I were sitting, in our wedding finery, on the shuttle bus Polly’s dad had hired to take guests from the hotel to the chapel. Then two Buddhist monks got on.

They both had shaved heads and glasses, and they wore orange robes the color of traffic cones. Lucy of course started talking to them, and it emerged that they were friends of James’s family from Australia and had come all this way to perform a blessing at the ceremony.

“This is our first time out of the monastery in three years,”
one of them said to Lucy. “Tomorrow we are going to see the pandas at the National Zoo!”

It began to dawn on me that this was not going to be the wedding I had anticipated. Because not even I believed I could impress Buddhist monks.

There was a lilt, a genuine happiness, in the voices of people walking up to the chapel. Women were snuggling up and tucking their hands into the pockets of men’s overcoats. Lucy tried to do this to me, but I shooed her away, as I didn’t want any potential hook-ups to think we were a couple.

The wedding was held in a simple clapboard chapel from the 1840s, plank boards and white pews. According to the program, this was the very chapel where Abraham Lincoln had gone to services with several freed slaves on the morning after he signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

I began to feel very itchy inside my sportcoat.

For ushers I’d expected a flop-haired, meathead band of James’s Australian Rules cronies. But, while Australian, they didn’t look meatheady at all. They were all thin. And clean-shaven. They had soft, cottony cheeks. They didn’t look like they’d been shooting dingoes. They looked like they might be in a glee club together. They weren’t eyeball-molesting bridesmaids. With gentle accents they were offering arms to old women.

Our usher was in fact a literally retarded kid—legitimate Down syndrome—who was taking his responsibilities very seriously.

“Bride or groom?” he asked Lucy.

“Bride,” she told him. “Are you by any chance James’s brother George?”

“Yeah, I’m George,” he said.

“I’m Lucy! Are you excited about your new sister-in-law, George?”

“Yeah, she’s a great sister-in-law,” George said. The Buddhist monks, already seated, looked back at us and smiled. Lucy turned to me with a “how great is that?” expression, and I fake-smiled as best I could.

“There’s James!” said George.

And there he was indeed, my first sight of him, up at the altar. He looked, in a word, innocent. Like Macaulay Culkin, but with perkier eyes. The manliest things about him were his shoulders, which jutted out wide under his tuxedo. I watched him wave to his kid brother as he took his place.

The wedding started to come into focus for me, like a Polaroid developing. My illusions slipped away. I saw Polly’s dad, a lawyer with an unfortunate patchy baldness, smiling and shaking hands as he worked his way around the aisle. Polly’s mom, dyed black bun of hair on top, a woman who’d told me in a private moment that I seemed like a “great guy,” smiled behind him in a royal-blue dress. Once the two of them had taken Polly and me out to Legal Seafood, and Polly had told me afterward that they’d found me “disarming.”

I saw Polly’s kid brother, a twenty-two-year-old fuckup who lived in his parents’ basement and smoked pot all day. But even he had scrubbed up, and he led in his grandmother, a woman who’d once pinched my cheeks and told me I looked like “a healthy young Irishman.”

Derek whispered hello as he slid in next to me, and he brushed off the pew before letting his Mount Holyoke girl sit down.

Then the organ blasted everyone alert, and we turned our heads around as Polly came in.

I’ll spare the reader a bullshit description of how beautiful she looked coming down the aisle. Beautiful wasn’t the key aspect. She did look beautiful, so beautiful that seeing her it occurred to me in a flash that somewhere in my past I’d ruined my entire life.

But worse than that was that she looked really, purely, happy.

In our time together, I’d seen Polly fake a lot of things. After our friend Alaina had paced around on a poorly lit stage for two full hours in a stupendously disastrous one-woman show about Dolley Madison, I’d watched Polly deliver fulsome and false compliments about how “captivating” it had been. To a distinguished professor of American history I’d seen her brilliantly allude to a false pregnancy, just to get out of sitting through a screening of
Birth of a Nation
. To my own mother I’d seen her deliver lengthy and baseless testimony on my remarkable diligence as a student. No one could fake someone out like she could. She was amazing. I’d loved her for it.

But walking down that aisle, beaming, she was not faking. I could tell. And it broke my heart all over again.

The Reverend—a woman—read the ceremony. There were readings from
The Prophet
and First Corinthians. The Buddhist monks chanted out a blessing in Tibetan.

The Reverend invited James and Polly “to share their vows with their friends and loved ones and with each other.”

They stared into each other’s eyes.

“I, James,” he said in an Australian accent, more rounded and genteel than I’d expected, “vow not to spend
every
Sunday morning watching rugger and cricket on SkyTV.” Happy laughs from the assembled. “I vow to remember to drive on the right side of the road.” Happy laughs. “I vow not to complain too much when you play Britney Spears.”

Again laughter, and then it got serious.

“I vow to support you, Polly, in everything that you do. I vow to protect you, Polly, and everything that you cherish. I vow to listen to you, to look after you, to be with you, when you wake, when you sleep, as a comfort, and a strength. I vow to love you, Polly, in everything that you are, in sickness and in health, till death do us part. I vow to give my life over to you, Polly, so we can make a new life, together.”

Lucy dabbed her eyes. They were as red as beets.

“I, Polly, vow to at least
try
to like Vegemite,” she said. Cathartic, happy laughs from choked-up throats. “I vow to appreciate the cultural achievements of Australia, such as Kylie Minogue, Kath and Kim, and INXS.” Relaxed laughs. “I vow not to always point out that Budweiser is
vastly
superior to Victoria Bitter.” Laughs and scattered cheers and friendly boos, hovering just within a reasonable volume limit.

“I vow to support you, James, in your every endeavor. I vow to comfort you, James, in every care and worry. I vow to listen to you, to look after you, to be with you, when you wake, when you sleep, as a comfort—”

Here Polly’s throat snagged and she wiped her eye. She took a breath, and let out a soft laugh. You could feel the crowd pulling for her. With a tremble she pushed on. “I vow to love
you, James, in everything that you are, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.” She took another breath, and then her voice was calm and strong. “I vow to give my life over to you, James, so we can make a new life, together.”

Some Australian let out a genteel “Hurrah!” and joyous cheers erupted. Lucy badly defaced the sleeve of her dress mopping up tear-water and snot.

In months of working on
The Tornado Ashes Club,
I’d gotten good at manipulating emotions. Now, confronted with something real, I was gutted.

There were several things I could’ve done next. I could’ve repented everything. I could’ve gotten on my knees and prayed to God and Abraham Lincoln to wash away my lies and let me start all over again. I could’ve pulled aside the woman reverend, unburdened myself of everything I’d done since losing Polly, and asked her how to lead a true and righteous life. I could’ve stolen a moment to introduce myself to James, shake his hand, and congratulate him on being the better man. I could’ve found Polly’s parents, thanked them for their kindness to me, and hugged them for raising such a wonderful daughter. I could’ve turned to redcheeked Lucy, told her she was the sweetest and kindest person I’d ever met, and asked her to marry me.

Instead, I dashed out of the chapel, forced myself, on the pretext of a “medical emergency,” into the rented Daewoo of one of Polly’s cousins whom I’d met years before at a clambake, rode silently back to the Radisson, stopped at the front desk and had them sell me a package of cold medicine, consumed all eight pills, made for the ballroom, told the bartender that I was “with the family” and it was okay to start serving me early, and encouraged him to be generous in his pouring.

THINGS I DID, OR AM ALLEGED TO HAVE DONE, AT POLLY’S WEDDING RECEPTION

• Stopped the hors d’oeuvres lady, took ten shrimp, put them in a plastic cup, and told her to “scurry along and reload.”

• Asked one of Polly’s bridesmaids, who was a high school English teacher, which of Hemingway, Shakespeare, and Mark Twain was “the worst liar.” Suggested that if any of them were alive today, they’d be writing car commercials.

• Confronted the reverend and asked her how long they’ve been ordaining ladies.

• Challenged James’s brother George to a shrimp-throwing contest in the parking lot. Defeated him by hitting five windshields in six throws to his three.

• Gave Polly’s mom a hug, holding said hug for well over a full minute, long after she had grown visibly uncomfortable.

• Told the story of Derek and the Mount Holyoke girl to the Buddhist monks, with added ribald detail of my own invention, at one point inviting the Mount Holyoke girl over and suggesting she provide some illuminative physical demonstrations.

• Told Derek I didn’t want to fight him but would if necessary.

• Summoned a group of Australians and delivered a lecture on the theme “Honest Abe Lincoln: The Bearded Hero.”

• Informed my tablemates at dinner that I probably could’ve slept with Polly’s mom.

• Told Lucy that her attempts to quiet me were “crypto-fascist.”

• Declared myself to be a skilled amateur chef. By way of demonstration, poured vodka all over Lucy’s sea bass. When she protested, proclaimed that her palate was “unrefined.”

• Told the reluctant bartender that he was a “cur” and I would fight him.

• Asked the teacher bridesmaid if she thought I could beat Josh Holt Cready in a fight.

• After unwrapping several false leads, found the Oenophile Select Temperature-Controlled Dual-Zone 28-Bottle Wine Refrigerator. Carried it outside. Smashed it against a Dumpster.

• Returned inside. Threw up discreetly into a napkin. Decided to deliver a few brief remarks and convinced the DJ to hand me the microphone.

I’m told my speech ended with the DJ turning up “The Chicken Dance” really loud to muffle my protesting screeches as Derek and Lucy led me out to the hallway. There I escaped their grasp and ran out the door. I gained control of a hotel shuttle bus and drove it in jerking loops around the parking lot until bumping into a curb.

The next day I woke up in the hotel bathtub.

Fish sometimes get a condition called pop eye, where gas built up inside them causes their eyes to bulge out and
eventually burst. I had that. My arms were as weak and trembling as those of a veiny wheelchair-bound centenarian, and it took the greatest efforts of will and strength to extricate myself from the soilings that covered my clothes. My brain squirmed and writhed as though trying to undo itself from an intricate knot. I felt as though my innards had been reduced to a sickly chum, and my interior muscles at spastic intervals tried to heave them up and out. My best defense was to try and pass out before each new assault of nausea hit its violent apex.

All of this was but one level of my punishment. The endless ride back to Boston was punctuated from time to time as Lucy, in the dispassionate tones of the traumatized, recalled and related some new disgrace I’d committed. I could barely keep my consciousness threaded together for long enough spells to listen.

For my part, I had only two very clear memories, chance snatches of footage that somehow preserved themselves, Zapruder films from the drunken mind.

One was this: slouched in a corner of the ballroom, against the wall, sucking on a lime, I watched Lucy and Polly talking on the dance floor. Polly walked over. Focusing on my lime I pretended not to notice her pulling up her wedding dress so she could kneel beside me and touch my cheek.

“Pete,” she said, “please go to bed.”

“Happy wedding,” I said.

“Please. Let them take you back.”

Then she walked away.

The other memory was this: walking through the hall, Derek holding my arm like a gruff prison guard as I performed a half-remembered version of the sentimental Irish tune “The
Foggy Dew,” we passed two middle-aged women sneaking cigarettes.

“Is that the guy who wrote the book?” one of them said to the other, trusting that I was too addled to overhear.

“Yeah,” the other said. “Drunken writers, I guess.”

“Well let me tell you,” said the first. “I read it. And it wasn’t good enough for him to get away with behaving like
that
.”

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