Mad Girls In Love (59 page)

Claude and Jennifer stepped up to the lattice altar. Her father answered the minister's question about who gave this woman, with “I do,” emphasis on the
I
, and handed her over to Pierre. As the minister opened his Bible, the wind began to rise. “And now I shall read from Paul in the book of Corinthians,” said the preacher. “‘Although I speak in tongues of men and angels, I'm just sounding brass and tinkling cymbals without love. Love suffers long, love is kind, enduring all things.'”

Is it really all those things?
Jennifer wondered, then chastised herself for being cynical. As the rain started to fall, a breeze swept through the tent and snapped the canvas panels. The minister asked Pierre if he would take Jennifer to be his wife. Pierre tilted to the right, looking around Jennifer, and gazed at the wedding party. The minister's words trailed off. He wiped the rain from his face and waited patiently for the groom's answer. Jennifer craned her neck, trying to see what had captured Pierre's attention.

“Pierre?” she said.

The groom turned back to the minister and said, “I will, I mean, I guess I do.”

Laughter scattered through the younger guests. Jennifer's breasts rose and fell beneath the Vera Wang. When she'd been a small girl, her mother had told her, “You were inside me right
here.
” She'd pressed Jennifer's hand against her flat stomach. “You were a baby mermaid, and you kicked like crazy. So much élan! I just knew you'd be born with fins and a tail.”

“Better than horns,” Aunt Violet had said.

 

After the five-course dinner, the orchestra began playing songs from the seventies and eighties, with a few standards squeezed in for the old-timers. Ian raised his champagne glass and said, “Here's to love.”

“To love,” said Bitsy, touching her glass to his.

The others joined in, clinking their glasses. A waiter passed a tray of mints. Dorothy rose from her seat and grabbed a handful, then she sat down, offered one to her sister. Clancy Jane started to take it, then saw Byron walking over to the table. He put his arm around the back of her chair. “I was hoping to see you tonight,” he said. When she didn't answer, he added, “Your dress is pretty.”

She murmured a demure thank you, then looked up at him and smiled. “So, Byron, how did you manage to crack the guest list?”

“Dorothy pulled a string.” He winked at his former sister-in-law. She giggled, then gulped down a mint.

“She's pulled more than one.” Clancy Jane pointed to Louie, who was dancing with Violet, her enormous stomach shifted to the side. Dorothy rolled her eyes, then ate another mint. In her next life, she thought, she wasn't having any children, and she wasn't breeding Pomeranians, either. She was going to work in a candy shop.

From the stage, the band started playing “Silver Springs.”

“At last,” Clancy Jane said. “A decent song. Even if the singer is no Stevie Nicks.”

“Let's dance,” Byron said, extending his hand. Clancy Jane took it and got up from her chair. Across the table, Ian dropped to one knee and smiled up at Bitsy. “Will you dance with me?”

Bitsy studied his face. He seemed to be asking another question, but first she wanted him to know what a long way she'd come, across all the foolish years of her life to reach this calm, contented moment. Then she took his hand. “I would love to dance with you,” she said.

They got up, walked over to the checkerboard floor, and leaned against each other. He took one of his beautiful hands and enveloped both of hers, pressing them to his chest. She lifted her chin. He touched her face but didn't say a word.

Several feet away, Louie and Violet were watching. They were still watching when the song ended and a lanky girl swaggered up to the microphone and started singing Poco's “Crazy Love.”

“She's never coming back, Louie,” Violet told him.

“Doesn't look like it.” He drew in a ragged breath. “I really messed up, didn't I?”

“Yes, you did,” Violet said in a stern voice, then she softened. “But you're still the only man I know who looks rugged in pink.”

The song ended and two new singers launched into a duet, “Ever Changing Times.” Clancy Jane and Byron were talking about her cats. She told him point-blank how many she owned and he threw back his head and laughed. Then he hugged her closer.

“Where do they dredge up these songs?” Clancy Jane sighed. “I keep waiting for them to play New Kids on the Block.”

“I've missed you.” Byron inched closer. Outside the tent, lightning briefly illuminated the hillside. The rain began falling harder.

A woman with bright red fingernails danced by, steering a burly man in a damp tuxedo. “Well, hello, Dr. Falk,” the woman said to Byron. Then she turned to Clancy Jane. “Isn't he the most marvelous dancer?”

“He ought to be,” Clancy Jane said. “I taught him.”

 

Dorothy's head was spinning, and it wasn't because Mack had brought that floozy to the wedding—it was the champagne. She sat at the table, her chin in her hands, watching the guests act like pure-dee idiots. She didn't know what it was about weddings, but they seemed to bring out the worst in people. The ushers, oblivious to the downpour, were crowded around the fountain, guzzling champagne. And that damn Chick was out there with them, matching the boys drink for drink. His wet tuxedo was plastered to his body. Miss Betty was standing at the edge of the tent, arguing with the caterer, who was breathing into a brown paper bag. God only knew what this gala had cost. The next time Jennifer got married—and she probably would, considering her age and gene pool—Dorothy hoped the girl would find a chapel in Gatlinburg and skip the high-priced hoopla. For under a hundred dollars, Jennifer could get married, play goofy golf, and have a pancake supper. And for just a little bit more, she could bungee jump.

 

Around ten o'clock, the rain stopped falling, and Dorothy wandered out to one of the Porta-Johns. The door of one flung open, and two bridesmaids ran out, their faces swollen and mottled. They looked as if they had been weeping or vomiting, possibly both. Dorothy followed them toward the dressing tent, where a diaphanous curtain drifted in the wind. The girls walked past it, but Dorothy stopped. Inside the tent, she recognized Pierre's voice. She heard groaning. The breeze lifted the curtain several inches, showing tuxedo pants dropping down into a heap around Pierre's ankles. The maid of honor was holding armfuls of her red dress. She was bent at the waist. Pierre moaned again, his eyes halfway closed. The wind died, and the curtain fell, and Dorothy could only see vague shapes behind the cloth; but grunting sounds continued.

My God
, Dorothy thought, covering her mouth with one hand. She had to find Bitsy. No, she had to find Jennifer. She couldn't let her granddaughter go on a honeymoon with that little cheater. The marriage was less than two hours old, and already he'd turned into an infidel.

Thunder cracked in the distance, and rain began to patter again. Dorothy hurried back to the tent and sat down in her chair, trying to catch her breath. Jennifer was dancing with her father, laughing at something he was saying. She looked so happy. Pierre's mother stepped out into the center of the marble floor, and began shaking her hips. They looked like lethal weapons, Dorothy thought. She turned away in disgust and saw the maid of honor running around the far edge of the tent, mascara dripping down her cheeks. She lifted her red dress and jumped over a man who was lying in the middle of the field, an empty bottle of champagne cradled in his arms, his body illuminated by a floodlight. With a jolt, Dorothy recognized the body. The redhead appeared to have gone, which just tickled Dorothy to pieces. She started to move toward her baby boy, thinking she needed to fetch him before he caught pneumonia. Then she saw Pierre standing at the edge of the dance floor. He lunged forward, banging into Louie's shoulder, then stumbled around Violet. Jennifer and Claude stopped dancing to watch as Pierre mounted the stage and pushed aside the musicians. He grabbed the microphone and his eyes swept the crowded tent. Then he screamed, “Tiffany!”

The music broke off. A few couples kept on dancing, but everyone else was looking at Pierre. The guests began to whisper. “Who's Tiffany? Tiffany who?”

“The maid of honor,” someone said.

Turning to face the stage, Bitsy wondered if Pierre had caught the girl tying condoms and orange juice cans onto the bumper of the bridal limousine and was yelling for her to stop. From the stage, Pierre kept calling the name, and Bitsy finally understood. Miss Betty, who was standing several feet from Dorothy, appeared to have understood, too, and in a loud voice began explaining that Tiffany owed Pierre and Jennifer a great deal of money.

“Tiffany!” Pierre cried again in a hoarse voice.

“
Lots
of money,” Miss Betty told a guest.

“TIFF-FANY!”

One of the musicians shook Pierre's arm, but the groom stood rooted. Then someone in the audience clapped, and Pierre took a bow. His father climbed onto the stage, followed by Claude. They grabbed the boy and reeled sideways. For a moment the trio appeared to be dancing, their arms locked together, weaving back and forth. Finally they dragged Pierre off the stage, out onto the lawn, into the pouring rain, next to the fountain.

Jennifer stood motionless in the center of the dance floor. Claude staggered back inside the tent, toward the stage. “Start playing again,” he told the band. “And keep on playing, no matter what happens. Just pretend that you're on the
Titanic
.”

The musicians grabbed their instruments and began “Addicted to Love,” an unfortunate choice. But once they started, they couldn't seem to quit. Jennifer stomped off the dance floor, past Miss Betty, who reached out to grab the girl's arm.

“Your lovely dress,” gasped Miss Betty. “You've ruined it.”

“Take it to the thrift shop,” said Jennifer, pulling away. She ran out of the tent, into the rain. Samantha shot out of her chair and tried to follow, but the marble dance floor was slick from people tramping in and out of the tent, and the tiles were speckled with grass. Halfway across the floor, her feet flew out from beneath her and she landed hard on her hip. The music never stopped playing. Several people rushed over, asking if she was hurt. She sat motionless on the marble, legs bent into a W. She only responded when Louie DeChavannes helped her to her feet.

“I'm a doctor,” he said. “Are you hurting anywhere?”

She started to shake her head, then she apparently changed her mind, and vigorously nodded. “I-I might need an examination,” she told him.

Next to the fountain, in the rain, Jennifer was yelling at Pierre. He yelled back, and she lifted her bouquet and started beating him over the head. Petals spun into the air. Dorothy stood up, then sat back down. If she made a scene, she'd never forgive herself. She had spent the last few years minding her own business, trying to repair her damaged reputation. Her theme song was “Smile,” even though in real life, she was careful about smiling because it caused unnecessary wrinkles. Lyle Lovett sang that song so pretty, Dorothy just loved him, even though she would never have married him like Julia Roberts had. But maybe Julia had fallen in love with that voice. Lyle had cheated on Julia, too, if you believed the
Enquirer
.

Dorothy believed it.

While Jennifer pummeled the groom, he crouched down, his hands folded over his curly head the way criminals did when the police led them past the press. She turned and saw her bridesmaids lined up and staring. The maid of honor was not among them. Jennifer took a deep breath and threw her bouquet into the air not toward the bridesmaids, but into the fountain. It listed onto its side for a moment, then finally drifted to the bottom.

“Goddammit, Jen,” Pierre said, staring down at the flowers. “You didn't have to do that.”

“Oh, shut up.” She hiked up her dress and started to walk off, then stopped. “You asshole.”

“You fucking destroyed it,” he cried. Then he turned and leaned over the fountain reaching for the bouquet, but he lost his balance and fell in, face first. A wave of champagne surged over the sides, onto the grass. The bouquet bobbed away, pushed forward by the ripples, sliding along the bottom, only inches away from his grasp.

The rain was falling harder now, beating against Jennifer's shoulders. As she neared the tent she saw her mother, and a memory floated up, of the way they had danced in the front yard. It supposedly had been to bring rain, but suddenly Jennifer wondered if the dance had a deeper purpose, to grant wishes, answer fervent prayers. She turned her face up at the sky, her eyelashes spangled with rain and tears, and made a wish.

Guests had gathered at the edge of the tent. Dorothy didn't like how they were staring at Jennifer, so she began to herd people toward the checkerboard floor. Thank goodness the musicians hadn't stopped. “Please, dance!” she cried in an exuberant, take-charge voice. “Everybody dance!”

The violinist stepped around the fountain and began to play “She Moves Through the Fair.” Some of the notes were drowned out by the band—they were singing another Fleetwood Mac song—but the violinist continued undaunted. Bitsy whispered into Ian's ear and squeezed his arm, then walked past Chick and Miss Betty, into the rain. In seconds she was drenched. Lightning cracked overhead, but she didn't seem to notice. Jennifer and Bitsy walked toward each other. The violinist kept playing, and music floated up, past the clouds, rising all the way to the constellations and beyond. Jennifer squeezed her mother's hand and made another wish:
Let me be just like this woman.