The Last Original Wife (32 page)

CHAPTER 26

Les—The Bare Truth

I
was so embarrassed by what Wes told me that Harold had done to himself I thought I would pass out right on the floor. What was the matter with these men? We could talk about
that
until the end of time. Instead, I concentrated on Molly and what a magnificent bride she was, a confection of tulle and lace as she floated up the aisle and on Holly, my little treasure, carefully dropping rose petals right and then left. It was all simply magical, the bridesmaids in gray silk with pearls and pink flowers in their hair and pink and white bouquets. The groomsmen, so young and handsome in their tuxedos, wondering which of them would be next. And the profusion of flowers cascading everywhere, and everything and everyone glowing in the pale gold warmth of a thousand candles. It was very traditional and classic and simply spectacular.

As Molly and Shawn said their
I do
s, her voice quivered with emotion and his was strong and firm, as though he couldn't wait to let everyone know he intended to marry her forever. It was a very moving ceremony.

As soon as Molly and Shawn were pronounced man and wife, Wes and Harlan slipped out through the side aisle in search of security before the newlyweds even came back down the aisle. I sighed in relief. Where was Cornelia's and Lisette's pride? How could they show their faces here and on this day especially? Wes was right. They were up to no good. I couldn't help but wonder what evil they had cooking in their tiny little peanut-sized brains.

I moved slowly along with the throng as we all made our way to the ballroom, thinking it was the sweetest wedding I had been witness to in years and certainly the most beautiful. Suddenly in that moment, I felt maternal pangs. All I wanted then was for Bertie and Charlotte to find someone to love. It wasn't about getting married necessarily, although I would love for Holly to have a stepfather. I just didn't want my children to be lonely. Loneliness leads to despair and then depression, and I just couldn't stand to think about my children feeling so blue or having no partner for them. Though I liked the way Harry Chen and Charlotte deferred to each other. Maybe something would come of it. And I thought it was curious that both of Harold's daughters were flirting with Bertie. You never know. I loved my Bertie like a wild woman, but with that hair of his? Well, the old saying about beauty and the eye of the beholder had never been truer. Ironically, I had just discovered that being alone didn't necessarily mean you'd be lonely and now I was wishing for committed relationships for my children. Motherhood rots your brain.

As soon as we all reached the ballroom, everyone picked up the little cards that indicated our seating assignments, but I put ours back on the hospitality table so Harlan and Wes could find me without a problem. We were all seated at Table Five, which was just opposite the long table that had been set up for the wedding party and the parents of the bride and groom.

The band was playing and Danette was right—they were incredible. And this wasn't a band—it was an orchestra. There was even a horn section and they were playing “The Way You Look Tonight.” For some reason, every time I heard that song my eyes welled up with tears. But I'd already shed a few tears during the ceremony, and I wasn't going to shed any more and ruin my makeup. Maybe I was particularly sensitive because my own marriage was evaporating.

I didn't hate Wes and I wasn't really angry either. Exasperated but not angry. And, in the interest of full disclosure, Wes and I had not been like man and wife in years, except once on Valentine's Day a few years ago when he realized that he forgot to buy me a card when I gave him three, stashed in his medicine cabinet, his sock drawer, and under his coffee cup. Maybe he thought a five-minute mattress mambo was a worthy substitute? I'd rather have had roses. Even from the grocery store and with a gaggle of baby's breath. Oh well. It didn't matter anymore anyway. I'd told him to go on about his life and consider us to be separated and I'd meant it.

I took a seat at the table and unfolded the napkins to my left and right and draped them on the back of the chairs so the other guests at our table would know those seats were taken. Two young couples approached and sat down. They politely introduced themselves as friends of Shawn and said that they had all gone to medical school together. Four doctors at one table.

“My goodness!” I said. “If anyone has a heart attack tonight, they can be saved!”

“I'm actually a dermatologist,” the doctor to my left said, “and my wife's a psychiatrist, but we'll do our best.”

“Yes, ma'am,” the other male doctor said, “and we're both ob-gyns but we can help too!”

We all laughed at that, and I looked up to see Wes and Harlan coming toward the table.

Charlotte and Harry were seated at another table with the ring bearer's parents, on the other side of the bridal party so that Charlotte could keep an eye on Holly.

“So how did it go?” I asked Wes.

“Well, first of all, security can't remove either one of them because Harold and Paolo never rescinded their signing privileges. But they said they'd keep an eye open.”

“Great. Harold and Paolo probably haven't had the time,” I said.

“Yeah, well, Harold doesn't want to and Paolo doesn't care,” Wes said.

“Those two are pretty liquored up,” Harlan said. “And I don't think they fully appreciated the poetry Wes offered them. In fact, I'm afraid they might have taken some offense.”

“What did you say, Wes?”

“What?
Me?
Look, I just said what was obvious, which was that they seemed a little over the edge for so early in the evening and that they might want to pace themselves a little bit. That's all.”

“Actually, Wesley, that's not the story in its
entirety,
” Harlan said.

“Then
you
tell it, Harlan,” Wes said, with patently obvious annoyance in his voice.

It was that old familiar tone Wes used when he was right on the verge of pulling the pin on his hand-grenade tantrums. I recognized it and Harlan sensed it, so we both became very quiet, giving Wes a moment to compose himself. This was another example of why I didn't miss living with Wes.

The waiters began pouring wine and champagne and they couldn't have arrived a moment too soon for me.

“Cheers!” I said to the whole table and raised my glass. “To Molly and Shawn!”

“Cheers!” they all said. Wes mumbled something that sounded like
harrumph
.

“So, Wes?” I said with a smile. “What do you think they are up to?”

Wes was now placated because I skipped over Harlan's version of the story to soothe Wes's very delicate ego. Wes took a long drink of his white wine and put the glass down.

“I think that Cornelia somehow wants to embarrass Molly and Shawn and that she needs a lot of vodka and her sidekick to find the nerve to do it,” Wes said and looked around. “I just said to her, ‘Look, sweetheart, I know you caught the short end of the stick on this one, but give Harold a little time. Don't go showing your weaknesses. Always deal from strength.' Isn't that what I said, Harlan?”

“Yes, and then you added something to the effect of ‘It's not like Harold has any other children,' and she said, ‘You mean so that if he had another child get married, he'd have to throw me out of the house again?' ”

“For some reason she took issue with that,” Wes said.

“Well, honey, I guess she did,” I said.

“Why? What did I say?”

“Wes?” Harlan said. “What you basically said was that she was unfit for family celebrations. At least, that's how she took it.”

“Aw, come on. Really? Cornelia knows me well enough to know I wouldn't go out there and insult her!
I'm
the one she's been crying to all along! She
knows
me.”

“She's probably pretty unsure about everyone in Harold's world at this point, Wes.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“Those two make me nervous,” Harlan said.

Wes said, “I agree, Harlan. They make me nervous too.”

The orchestra announced the first dance, and Shawn and Molly took the floor, dancing a lovely waltz. We all stood and applauded, and then all the parents joined them. A few moments later, Harold tapped on Molly's shoulder and he danced with his daughter while Shawn danced with his mother. And then in a moment of generosity, Danette changed partners from Nader to Harold and Molly danced with Nader. Eventually the entire Nicholls family was on the dance floor with all the Stovalls and all the bridesmaids and groomsmen. And our little Holly? She held the hands of the ring bearer in a tight grip and led him around the floor, pausing every now and then to spin him around. The photographer and the videographer were everywhere, capturing the entire moment for posterity. I couldn't wait to see all the pictures.

The dance floor got busy as the waitstaff put the first course on our table. It was two large grilled shrimp over a mixed green salad. Not very imaginative, but then it was club food. And most people liked simple straightforward meals.

“Not bad,” Harlan said, taking a bite.

“And the wine's not too terrible either,” Wes said.

“It's actually quite nice,” I said.

“This club is the greatest,” Wes said. “They really know how to throw an event.”

“Yes, they do,” I said.

We passed the bread baskets around, ate, and made small talk with the other guests at our table, watching the bridal party dance. Holly ran over to us several times, once to announce that when she grew up she was going to be a princess like Molly except that her dress would be covered in sparkles, another time to tell us that she was the only person in the whole room who was getting chicken fingers and French fries, and finally to ask Wes to dance with her. Wes said,
of course,
got up and led her on the dance floor. She stood on his shoes and he took her all around the room. The sight of them was priceless. When the music ended, Wes walked her back to her table and then came back to ours.

“There's a reason why young people have babies,” he said.

“Yes, because it takes every bit of strength you've got!” I said.

“Yeah. I wish they'd play some Sinatra,” he said.

The salads were cleared away and replaced by plates of individual beef Wellingtons or Cornish hens stuffed with mushrooms and rice. They both contained a million calories, so I decided I might as well have the beef.

“I'll have the beef as well,” Harlan said.

“Me too,” Wes said.

The poor little tenderloin had been cooked hours earlier and was killed off completely when it was reheated. It was shoe leather. We all took a few bites, looked at each other, and stopped eating.

“I should always take the chicken,” Harlan said. “Pretty hard to wreck a chicken.”

“True,” I said and shook my head.

“Want to dance?” Wes said as the orchestra played a slower tune. “That's Streisand.”

The band was playing “The Way We Were,” and I thought, Oh, boy, here we go.

“Why not?” I said. Separated or not, there was no reason not to be civilized to each other.

Harlan smiled and winked at me. “I've got the next one.”

“That's a deal!” I said and walked out on the crowded dance floor with him.

We began to do the walk around, and Wes held me closer than usual.

“You smell good,” he said.

“Thank you, Wes,” I said. “So do you.”

“You know, Les, with Cornelia and Lisette gone now, there's no reason why you can't come home.”

“Come on, Wes, we've been through this. Those stupid girls were only one aspect of what made me so unhappy. You know that.”

“I think we should try again, Les. We can show the world how to make a marriage work. And our kids. We can be an example.”

“I don't think that my being in Charleston sets a bad example. At all. And I'm not saying that I want a divorce. There's no point in making a bunch of lawyers rich. We've been over this, Wes. We want different things and we're going to be dead, maybe soon. Who knows?”

“Well, my cancer scare sure taught me about looking the grim reaper in the eye.”

“And you've still got eighty-something golf courses to play, don't you?”

“I guess. Yeah, you're right. It's time.” Suddenly, Wes pushed me back and stopped dancing. “Oh my God!”

His eyes were riveted to the main entrance. I turned around quickly to see Cornelia and Lisette sashaying their way across the ballroom with a pronounced swing of the hips, and neither one was too steady on her feet.

“Oh no,” I said.

They stopped in front of the bridal party's table and leaned over to their ankles as they pulled up their dresses to reveal their bare bottoms. I saw Harlan whip out his cell phone and start snapping pictures, as did the photographer and everyone else with the dexterity to quickly get their phones aimed at the moons. As if this wasn't bad enough, Lisette's heels were so high that they compromised her center of gravity. By the time she reached her ankles, she toppled over, and she took Cornelia to the floor with her. The orchestra stopped playing, the room began giving consecutive gasps, and Harold and Paolo rushed to Cornelia and Lisette to get them off the floor. As we moved back toward our table, I could see something was written on their backsides. Every time they tried to get up, they fell to the floor again.

Harlan was almost having seizures, suppressing a tidal wave of laughter and trying to appear properly horrified at the same time.

“What do their butts say?” I asked, and the question sounded so funny that I started to laugh. I couldn't help it. I mean, did they have vocal cords back there?

Wes said, “Yeah, I saw something like . . . it was maybe written with a Sharpie?”