Wedding Season (14 page)

Along with Bachelor Number Three (aka Mom’s fiancé), my younger brother Josh and his Nice-Jewish-Girl betrothed, Ruth, are already in their seats of honor, the advance guard, waving at us. My mother stands in the aisle beside them fluttering her hands; her face contorts as we approach.

“Honey,” she says, coming forward with her hands outstretched,
“what
are you wearing?”

For a moment I think I might be having one of those nightmares where I turn up at school stark naked.

“Claire, you look lovely,” Gabe intercepts.

“Thank you, Gabriel.” My mother pecks him on the cheek. “Joy, what on earth are you doing in
black?
You know you’re
never
to wear such dark colors to a wedding. A
spring
wedding, too. An
afternoon
wedding!” My mother talks in italics; I can almost see the little curls and loops etching the air as she speaks.

“Hi, Mom. Nice to see you, too.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “This is New York. We wear black to everything. And I don’t think Charlotte cares too much what we’re wearing, as long as we’re here, right?”

“But what will the
Ingersons
think? They’ll think I didn’t know how to bring you up. And it makes you look so
sallow
.”

She reaches up and pushes my hair away from my face. “Why don’t you borrow my blusher and run to the powder room, honey? Just a little color.”

“I think James has taken care of that,” Gabriel says, and we turn to see my brother come mincing toward us, resplendent in a bright pink suit with a chartreuse cravat and very loud, heavily embroidered waistcoat. My mother pales.

“Hello, baby girl!” James lifts me in his arms and twirls around. “Look at you, all dolled up.”

“Look who’s talking, big girl. I thought we were going to play nice.”

“Did I say that?” James puts me down. “I don’t recall saying that. Temporary insanity, your honor. Hi, gorgeous,” he says, bowing low over my mother’s hand and pressing his lips to the sizable diamond of her engagement ring.

“Oh, Jamie,” my mother says.
“Jamie.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Everyone is
looking
at you.”

James turns to the crowd of guests behind us and gives a big beauty-queen wave.

“Jamie, stop! Sit
down.
Let’s just sit down.” Mom tugs at his arm and he lets her drag him into a seat in the front row. She’s trying to maintain her ire, but as usual it’s not working. When it comes to Mom, James can and always has been able to get away with anything. Josh is the model son, has done and been everything standard-issue parents wish for, and he’s certainly held up as the shining example. But in the end, James is the beloved. As the firstborn, and the obvious candidate for the office of family black sheep, he was supposed to have blazed the trail for me, getting the first and worst of parental anxieties, severities, projections, displacements, and doing the basic breaking-in from which most second siblings benefit. Alas, that is not what happened. To his credit, James doesn’t take particular advantage of Mom’s doting on him. He likes to bait her, but it’s not out of malice.

I think he feels a genuine compassion for her, which I can’t quite bring myself to share.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” I tell no one in particular.

“Honey, take my blusher.” My mother reaches into her purse and retrieves a compact, which she hands to me. “Hurry, though.”

“You wouldn’t want to miss the ceremony,” Gabe adds, straight-faced, as he settles into the chair next to James.

“Don’t tempt me,” I hiss, and march away. Passing a group of guests who are bent together and bobbing their heads like nuns at prayer, I catch fragments of a joyously horrified conversation: “Fourteen years… her assistant… his mother… shush, hush!”

A couple of heads swivel in my direction. I lift my chin and, hurrying past, slam directly into Mrs. Ingerson, the mother of the groom, who reels backward into her husband. Mr. Ingerson steadies her as I apologize, and leans over to kiss my cheek.

“Well, well,” he says. “Well, well, well.”

“Well,” Mrs. Ingerson adds. “Well,
Joy
.”

“Fancy running into you here,” I say, and immediately regret it. They blink at me. “You both look very nice,” I tell them. They smile and nod.
“You
look very nice,” Mrs. Ingerson smiles. “Though you’re a little
pale
, dear. Is it too warm in here? Farley, do you think it’s too
warm
in here? Joy, you can’t
imagine
how nice it is in Philadelphia this time of year. We got married there, in the
sweetest
little church, didn’t we darling?” Her smile stretches out until her whole face trembles, and for a moment I imagine that she’s going to burst into a bright cloud of dust, which will hang in the air for a moment before it falls shimmering into a pile at our feet.

“Well, well.” Mr. Ingerson pats her hand, and we stumble
into a conversational black hole, staring blankly and nodding stupidly at one another. I clear my throat.

“The room looks very nice,” I say. “The tulips are really something.”

“I guess you and your young man will be walking down the aisle one of these days now, won’t you?” Mrs. Ingerson beams at me.

“Oh, yes,” I tell her. “Absolutely. During the winter season in Hades, I think.” Their automaton smiles confirm that they have missed this completely. I feel immensely cheered up. “Will you excuse me, please, Mrs. Ingerson, Mr. Ingerson? I was just on my way to the powder room.”

“Would you like to borrow my blusher?” Mrs. Ingerson asks. “You look
terribly
pale, dear. Though maybe it’s just that dark color you’re wearing.”

“Drink a glass of water,” Mr. Ingerson calls after me. “Wouldn’t do to have you fainting during the ceremony, would it?”

I consider this possibility as I skirt a group of small children using their plump little hands as automatic weapons in what appears to be a complete massacre near the ballroom’s entrance. One girl, a gawky kid who looks to be about seven, turns her index fingers on me and makes vicious machine-gun noises, her face contorted into a bloodthirsty scowl. I clutch at my gut, stumble against the door frame, and slump down on the carpeted floor of the hallway, moaning. I open one eye a fraction to see the girl standing over me, giggling.

“Hey, lady,” she says. “It’s not loaded.”

“That’s what you think,” I tell her. “It’s okay, though. Consider it a mercy killing.”

“What’s that?” The girl sticks her machine-gun finger into a sizable gap between a couple of teeth that haven’t quite finished coming in.

“It means you did me a favor.” I prop myself up on one elbow. “I was going to have to go put on makeup, but now that I’m dead there’s no point, is there?”

“You’re not dead,” the girl points out. “You’re breathing.”

“Oh, well. I guess I’ll have to go put on makeup after all.”

“Can I have some?” The girl watches me sideways as I stand up and dust myself off.

“Sure. Come to the bathroom with me.” I offer her my mother’s blusher compact. “You can do mine, too.”

“Your backside is dirty,” she notifies me, as she trails me down the hall.

“Good,” I tell her. “What’s your name?”

“Fred.”

“Fred?”

“It’s really Frederika but I hate that so you call me Fred, okay?” The girl says this all in one breath, then eyes me to see how it will go over.

“I’ll call you Fred. And you call me Mickey the Fin, okay?”

“That’s not your real name.” Fred giggles.

“It is today.” I hold open the door to the ladies’ lounge. “You get started with that stuff while I go to the bathroom, and then you can put some on me.”

“Okay, Mickey the Fin,” Fred climbs up onto one of the chairs arranged before a long mirror and counter designed to accommodate mass primping. I push through the swinging door into the bathroom, and several women at the sinks stop their conversation and turn to look at me. I ignore them and head for the stalls. From behind the door, I can hear their conversation resume, the voices overlapping like a cross-tide of little waves.

“Well, I don’t care what the Ingersons say,” one of them
shrills. “They’re in love, and I say good on her. I’d trade places with her in a minute.”

“They’re right. He’ll live to regret it. It’s not like she’s going to start having children at her age.”

“Not everyone has to have kids.”

“Look who’s talking. Your kids are everything to you.”

“Love isn’t everything, either. And he’s breaking his parents’ hearts.”

“If we’d all got married to please our parents, where do you suppose we’d be now?”

“Better off, probably.”

As I come out, the conversation stops again, and the women watch my reflection in the mirror as I leave. Back in the ladies’ lounge, Fred has succeeded in applying a great deal of rouge to her small cheeks, in big pink circles.

“How do I look, Mickey?” She squirms around and lifts her face for inspection.

“Fabulous. You look like my gorgeous friend Miss Trixie.” I sit down in the chair next to her. “Do mine just like that, please.”

Fred kneels in her chair, facing me, and begins the application with a serious expression. The bathroom door swings open and the women from the sinks emerge.

“Fred!” One of them, a woman about my mother’s age, in a slim black dress, crosses to us as the other women leave.

“Grandma Fred! Look what me and Mickey are doing! Grandma, this is Mickey the Fin.”

“Hello, Mickey. Don’t you both look lovely?” The woman gives me a big, beaming smile and lifts Fred up in her arms.

“Grandma, I’m not done yet,” Fred scolds.

“I see that. Mickey looks a little uneven.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I tell Grandma Fred. “Fred, come finish me.”

“Will she do mine, too?” a familiar voice asks, and I turn to see Henry leaning against the doorway in a skintight powder blue dress, grinning like a lunatic.

“When I’m finished with Mickey.” Fred takes my face in her little hands. “Hold still, Mickey.” Turning to Henry, she asks, “Who are you?”

“They call me Henry.”

“I’m Fred. This is Grandma Fred, and this is Mickey the Fin.”

“Mickey and I go way back, Fred. This is your namesake?” she asks the older woman.

“Granddaughter. Frederika the Younger. My daughter couldn’t let a terrible name just die the quiet death it deserved.”

“I got Henrietta. Our crosses to bear.”

“The sins of the fathers, no? Or the mothers, as the case may be,” Grandma Fred says.

“Your turn,” says Fred, pointing to Henry. “You want to be next, Grandma?”

“You bet, kiddo. I always knew you had an artistic streak,” she says, admiring Fred’s handiwork: extra large, very irregular ovals slanting across my face.

“Groom’s side?” I ask her.

“I’m Burke’s aunt. His mother’s reprobate sister.”

“The best kind.” Henry smiles as Fred steadies her face with one paw against Henry’s high, fair forehead.

“And you’re Charlotte’s people, correct?” Grandma Fred asks me.

“Niece. Her sister’s daughter.” I check my watch. “Fred, you’d better work fast.”

“I like Charlotte so much.” Grandma Fred strokes her namesake’s hair. “She’s a great lady.”

I meet her eyes in the mirror, and she means it.

“I like her pretty well, myself.”

“Me, too,” Henry vamps at her reflection. She has long, dark slashes of pink running from either ear almost to the corners of her mouth. “This might be the only moment in the entire day that anyone agrees on anything. Except for the wedding vows, of course.” She gives the junior beautician a noisy kiss. “Fred, I look divine! You’re a genius.”

“You now, Grandma.” Fred the elder sits obediently in front of the child. Alas, Fred has time only to complete one of the matriarch’s cheeks before a woman who looks to be just a couple of years my senior bursts into the ladies’ lounge, the very picture of frantic.

“Frederika!” She sighs, catching sight of the little girl, and then says, high-pitched, “Mother! Frederika! What on
earth
are you doing?”

“Mommy,” little Fred says, guilty and pretending not to be.

“Moira,” big Fred says, at the same time, and in precisely the same tone.

“Oh, my god.” Mommy/Moira takes us all in.

“Hi, there,” Henry grins, extending a hand. “Your lovely daughter was giving us last-minute beauty treatments. I didn’t have time to get to the salon this morning.”

“Mother, you’re
supposed
to keep her
out
of trouble,” the woman says, ignoring Henry. She digs angrily into her purse and pulls out a packet of antibacterial wipes. “Frederika, come here. Mother, really. The
ceremony
is about to start. What are people going to
think
if they see her like this? And you!
Here.”
She takes a break from her vigorous scrubbing of the cheeks of a whimpering Fred the Younger, and viciously extends a towelette to Fred the Elder.

“It was just lovely to meet you all.” Henry deepens her swamp-trash drawl and takes my arm. “Freddy, thank you so much for doing our makeup. We love it.” She throws Moira a steely glare and drags me out of the bathroom.

“Good-bye, Mickey the Fin,” I hear little Fred call after us.

Bursting out into the hallway, we meet my aunt, who is walking toward the entrance to the ballroom with Francine, the former clad in a slim, white dress and the latter in an enormous bridesmaid’s pouf of golden-orange organza and silk. My aunt’s face lights up at the sight of us, and then, registering our cosmetic aberrations, she does a double take worthy of a place in the Slapstick Hall of Fame and breaks into laughter.

“There’s a renegade beauty school student in there,” Henry says. “Watch your backs. She’s armed and dangerous.”

“I wish you’d sent her up to the bridal suite.” Charlotte hugs me sideways.

“Are we missing your wedding?” I ask.

“Can’t start without the bride,” Francine points out. “They can just wait until she’s good and ready.”

“You look pretty great.” Henry brushes her fingers over the fabric of Charlotte’s dress. “White! I didn’t know you’d been saving yourself for marriage, Auntie Cee.”