Father of the Bride (7 page)

Mr. Banks’ only reply was to count audibly to help his concentration. “Here’s the box score,” he announced at last. “Ten people have been asked to the church and not the reception. Five hundred and sixty-two have been asked to both. There are one hundred and fifty-two cards stamped ‘P.N.C.’ That leaves four hundred and ten people who might show up. Figuring that a third of them won’t, you’ll have two hundred and seventy-three people at the reception.

“I don’t follow you very well,” said Mrs. Banks in a dazed voice, “but it looks as if we’d have to cut out a few.”

“All you’ve got to do is to throw a hundred and twenty-three people out on their necks,” said Mr. Banks grimly.

Kay yawned. “I’m going to bed.
My
list is right down to the
bone,
so I can’t be of much help.”

Each white card . . . debated at length and returned to its place with a sigh.

Mr. Banks opened his mouth, but Mrs. Banks motioned it shut again. Kay stalked out of the room, swinging her hips with dignity.

“We can work it out,” said Mrs. Banks. “Kay’s upset. All we have to do is to shift these superfluous people over to the church and not invite them to the reception. Now the Harry Sparkmans—”

Mr. Banks refused the gage. The timing didn’t seem right. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go. We’ll start by putting the Garden Club in the church—and leaving ’em there.”

Each white card was removed from the box, de-bated at length, and returned to its original place with a sigh. At the end of each round, when they came to Carlton B. Zachery, they had succeeded in eliminating or relegating to the church only a handful of names. Quite obviously they were getting nowhere. They had too many dear, close, loyal, lifelong friends, to all of whom they seemed to be indebted.

After three fruitless evenings of this sort of thing Mr. Banks had lunch with a client who was head of a large accounting firm. He had just run the gauntlet himself and, after the manner of all survivors, he liked to strut his scars. As a form of wound-licking he had reduced everything to neat figures.

Wedding guests, he explained, should be broken down into church units and reception units. That was the only way to get at the per-unit cost. At his wedding each reception unit cost $3.72, including champagne, caterers, tips, breakage, flowers, furniture-moving and extra insurance. He had not included wear and tear, feeling that, considering the occasion, it would be on the mercenary side.

Mr. Banks made some calculations on the tablecloth, and the spirit of hospitality fled from him. That evening he had a business dinner in town, but the following morning he faced the shaving mirror with the set jaw of leadership.

Someone had to take the helm. Someone had to tie up this disintegrating situation before it fell apart completely. For three seventy-two a unit he would undertake to tie up a wounded lion.

“I’ll tell you one thing, Ellie,” he announced as he rubbed in the shaving soap vigorously. “Only a hundred and fifty people are coming to this reception. You’ve got to cut down the list. I don’t care who you leave out. I don’t care how many just get asked to the church. Pack ’em in. Build a grandstand in the chancel if you want. All I say is that the hundred and fifty-first person to enter this house gets thrown out on his ear even if it’s your own mother.”

He had reduced everything to neat figures.

Mrs. Banks looked at him with an astonishment that experience never seemed to dim. “Why, Stanley, that’s what I said at the very beginning. And you said it was an insult to ask anybody to the church and not the reception. I’m willing enough to cut and have been right along. Now people like the Sparkmans can just as well—”

Mr. Banks winced. “It’s not a question now of insulting people. It’s a matter of survival. What’s the world going to say when we land in the gutter just because we insisted on giving a wedding reception like a Roman emperor? No sir. It’s no use arguing with me now, Ellie. I’ve made up my mind. One fifty is the limit.”

Things looked better after he had had his breakfast, but he didn’t weaken. “Now, Ellie,” he said, as he left the house, “I want you to take that list today and slash it down to a realistic basis. I leave it all to you.”

•  •  •

He felt masterful and composed that evening as he entered 24 Maple Drive. Next to achieving sudden riches, acquiring financial equilibrium is almost equally gratifying.

“Got everything fixed up, Ellie?” he called into the living room.

“Yes, only—”

“Pops.” Kay came out and threw a slim arm around his neck. “Pops, you big stupid. Do you know what you did? You forgot Buckley’s list. It just came today.”

Mr. Banks’ psyche collapsed like an abandoned bathrobe. He walked slowly to the big wing chair and sat down heavily. “How many?” he asked. His voice sounded choked.

Mrs. Banks came boiling into action beside her daughter. “He couldn’t have been cuter,” she declared. “He only wants a hundred and twenty-five including
everybody.
And I mean that’s
everybody
. And he’s marked those that he doesn’t think will come—like the officers in his squadron and so on.”

“Oh, they’ve
got
to come.” Kay clasped her hands ecstatically.

Mrs. Banks hurried on. “There are about fifty ‘P.N.C.s’ on the list. So that really cuts it down to seventy-five. And if you figure only two thirds of those will show up—”

“O.K.,” interrupted Mr. Banks firmly. “That just means cutting seventy-five more from our list. If I haven’t got a friend left when this thing is over—why, I haven’t got a friend left—and that’s that.”

All evening the list was slashed. Everyone finally got into the spirit of the thing until bosom friends were thrown out with a whoop of joy. By eleven-thirty it was reduced to two hundred and four. If a third of those didn’t come there would be one hundred and fifty-three at the house. Beyond that point they could not go.

•  •  •

Two nights later Kay came into the living room and sat on the arm of her father’s chair. She ran her fingers through his thinning hair.

“Pops darling, are you going to miss me?”

He swallowed quickly and patted her knee. “Don’t let’s talk about it, Kitten. If you’re happy, I’m happy. That’s straight.”

“You’re so sweet, Pops.” She kissed him lightly on the forehead. “Do you know something? I hate to tell you—but I’ve done the stupidest thing.”

“Now what have you done? Mislaid Buckley?”

“No, Pops, but for the last few days I’ve been thinking of people I forgot. I mean
important
people. People that I’d have simply
died
if they hadn’t been at the reception.”

Mr. Banks sat up suddenly, his warm mood evaporated. “How many people?”

“Oh, I
knew
you’d be cross, Pops. I know it was very dumb. I’m afraid there are quite a
lot.
”

“How many is that?”

“Well, maybe forty.”

From this point on morale tended to disintegrate. So did the list. Each evening Mr. Banks thumbed through the “Church Only” cards with sad eyes.

“Bob and Liz!” he murmured. “If anybody’d told me Bob and Liz wouldn’t be at my daughter’s wedding reception I’d have said they were crazy. Remember the week ends we used to spend at their camp. Those were—”

“Why don’t you ask them, Stan? I agree with you. It just isn’t right not to have Bob and Liz. Why not make an exception?”

“Guess we should.” Mr. Banks tore up the pink card venomously and carefully made out a white one. “Maybe a third of them won’t come.”

Or again: “Len and Louise Warner! Imagine what they’re going to say. Our best friends. Three seventy-two a head. What price lifelong friends?”

“I know, dear. It’s so cold and calculating when you put it that way. I should think lifelong friends were very cheap at three seventy-two a pair.”

“A head,” corrected Mr. Banks, transferring the Warners to a white card.

The pink cards gradually shrank. The white ones increased daily. Mrs. Banks’ apprehensive look returned.

“I just don’t see what’s going to happen if all these people come,” she said.

“They can go out on the back lawn,” said Mr. Banks.

“Suppose it rains.”

“It won’t,” said Mr. Banks.

•  •  •

The day came when the list must be sent to the lady who spent her life addressing wedding invitations in a copperplate handwriting. There was a last futile attempt to get it under control.

“Who are all these clucks?” fumed Mr. Banks, pawing through the cards. “I’ve never heard of half of them. Here I am throwing an Irish picnic for a lot of fuddyduds I never heard of.”

“Well, they certainly aren’t
my
friends,” wailed Kay. “You all know I wanted a small wedding with just
my
friends. Now we seem to be putting on a
convention
or something.”

“I know, dear,” Mrs. Banks soothed. “It’s a shame we don’t have a bigger house. There are a lot of people I’d like to ask, I’ll admit. For instance, it seems to me we’ve left out all of Mother’s friends.”

“Whoever these people may be,” announced Mr. Banks quickly, “they are the Wedding Guests. The books are closed.”

   7   

YOU CAN’T WIN

It was Mr. Banks’ last decisive act for many days. He and Ben and Tommy continued to live at home, outwardly just as usual, but actually more like three harmless family ghosts than active participants.

The clothes carnival was on.

Although Mrs. Banks had always contended that she never had a minute to spare from morning until night, she and Kay now rushed to town each day immediately after breakfast. Mr. Banks’ socks lay undarned in the sewing bag. His buttonless shirts were stacked in neat piles in his dresser.

Each evening he and the two boys ate their dinner in glum silence while they listened to discussions of the dresses which were not there, the dresses which would have been becoming if they had been different and the dresses which would have been ravishing if Kay and her mother had been consulted about their design.

Mr. Banks gathered that the nation’s dress manufacturers had suddenly gone haywire and that nothing which they had produced during the last few months would be used by a self-respecting charwoman for work clothes. He had supposed that the principal worries connected with weddings revolved around things like champagne and caterers. Now he discovered that these were small beer.

Although Kay’s closet was bulging with clothes, he learned to his surprise that, for her money (or perhaps for his), it was as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. Had she been Venus rising from the sea her outfitting problem could not have been more basic.

Because no one would pay any attention to him he was forced to resort to indirect methods. He would open the door of the closet and make playful remarks about the rows of dresses and shoes. He drew subtle comparisons with the children of Europe. He told anecdotes about his grandmother’s frugal girlhood in a parsonage. The only recognition he received was when Kay occasionally pushed him aside with
“Please
, Pops. Can’t you see you’re right in the
way?
Why don’t you go downstairs and
read?
You just don’t
understand.
”

At those moments he would be in full agreement with his daughter for the first time in days.

Mrs. Banks’ own costume seemed to be giving her a perplexing amount of trouble. She had interminable and costly telephone conversations with Mrs. Dunstan on the subject.

“What in the world has her dress got to do with yours?” asked Mr. Banks. “Are you two going as Tweedledum and Tweedledee?”