Mockingbird (31 page)

Angela held my hand, looking at me. “Probably not. You scared anyway?”

“No,” I said. “Well, yes. But I'm okay. I just want to get it over with. Want a brownie?”

The toilet flushed. Angela squeezed my hand. “Later. I have all I can handle upstairs.”

Candy stomped out of the bathroom in her bare feet and wedding gown, the buttons undone all down her back. “With any luck the damn priest will drown,” she said, and stomped upstairs. Angela rolled her eyes and followed.

After a moment's thought I waddled over to the chifforobe. Momma's gods gazed out at me, the Preacher stern, Sugar lazy, Pierrot grinning his cruel smile. “Now, you listen to me,” I said quietly, picking up the Widow by her test-tube body and staring at her black button eyes. “This was your idea, remember? This is supposed to be the happiest day of my little sister's life. And I swear on Momma's grave that if you ruin it for her, I'm going to take you down to the Greyhound bus station and bury you six feet deep in the Lost and Found box, do you hear me?” I shook the Widow until the dried spiders in her glass body bounced and jiggled.

I heard what sounded like the ghost of a malicious laugh. “That goes for the rest of you too. You know what I'm going to do with you if this doesn't go well?” I said, glaring at Pierrot. “You're going to be a Christmas present for a family I know with
two-year-old twins.
”

The faint laughter choked off.

I closed the chifforobe doors and got busy setting out candles.

Just after nine, to my complete surprise, our guests began to arrive.

Greg was first, sweeping inside with a great stomp and flourish, resplendent in a London Fog raincoat and brandishing an enormous green umbrella. “I'm early! Can you imagine it? But I thought I'd better come while the skies were clear.” Whisking through the front door, he spun around on one heel, accidentally spattering me with raindrops from his twirling umbrella, and wound up leaning against the wall next to the table-cum-sideboard. “Rice Krispie squares! Yum. But I'll wait until the reception proper, shall I?”

I wiped the water from my face. “Hey, Greg, glad you could make it.” And suddenly I was. If I were to double over with agonizing contractions in the next thirty seconds, Greg would be instantly available for a spot of Galahading. He wasn't husband material, not for me—nor was I wife fiber for him, apparently—but in the short term, I couldn't ask for a better friend.

“Say, have you met Charisse?” he asked, as a young black woman walked up behind him. “Charisse, this is Toni Beauchamp, the sister of the bride.”

“Pleased to meet you,” she said, looking amused as Greg struggled to fold up his umbrella. “Greg told me dates were invited. I hope it's true.” She held out her hand and I took it.

“The more the merrier. Frankly, we weren't expecting a big turnout.”

“I'm only two blocks away.” Charisse was wearing a classy skirt, long red nails, gold hoop earrings, short-cropped hair. I figured her for a jazz singer and then wondered if that was racist. Then I tried imagining her as a junior loan executive and decided she could have been that too. I liked her. “Come in, please. Find your favorite place along the wall. So has Greg told you any stories about my mother?”

“No, I don't think so,” Charisse said. Greg paled.

“Well, he should. Either that, or make him promise to do the alphabet to you,” I said.

“What?”

“Later,” Greg said, taking her by the arm. “You should see their garden before the rain comes back.”

La Hag Gonzales was next to arrive, along with all of Carlos's brothers and sisters, each bearing a platter or basket or tray of wonderful delicacies: at the center, of course, a vast simmering chicken mole, smelling of peppers and bitter chocolate gravy. Second in importance, the
viscochos,
small round cinnamon wedding cookies. And then, loading the table until it groaned, salsa and tortilla chips and pan de dulce, tacitos, shrimps and scallops speared on toothpicks and then wrapped with bacon and basted with lime butter, tamales, fried cheese, fried tomatoes, fried battered jalapeños, and menudo, that delicious combination of hominy and tripe that is so intoxicating in the hands of a master. Nor had La Hag forgotten drinks: two of her brothers wheeled in a massive keg of Dos Equis, and she herself bore six bottles of Jose Cuervo's best tequila.

“Oh, Señora Gonzales! This is so wonderful!
Es excelente!
Gracias, thank you, thank you!”

La Hag shook her head. “I am much embarrassed. We could not get the cake from Señora Gomez. The world will know how she has shamed me.” Her look did not bode well for poor Mrs. Gomez, who was doubtless in a dither at having to choose between Hurricane Iris and an enraged Conchita Gonzales. “Also, I am sad to say the mariachi players will be unable to attend. Something about a house falling down.”

“I hope nobody was hurt!”

“Nobody,” said Carlos's mother, with an unsatisfied air. Clearly she considered failing to perform merely because one's house had washed away tantamount to malingering.

I snuck a glance at the chifforobe and breathed a small thanks to the gods in there. Surely sparing Candy the mariachi band had to count as a small miracle in the Riders' favor. “Carlos is not with you?”

“I sent him to fetch the priest.”

“From Baytown? That's . . . that's going to be quite a drive on a day like this.”

Sefiora Gonzales smiled. “Child, do not worry. He is my son. He will come.”

The next guest to arrive was the most surprising of all: it was Penny Friesen, Bill Sr.'s wife. “Mrs. Friesen,” I said, shocked. I kicked myself for not telling Candy about Momma's affair with Bill Sr. She must
have invited the Friesens without my knowing it.

“Hello, Toni.” A look passed between us, and I knew my stammering had given me away. Oh yes, Penny Friesen knew about Momma and her husband, and she knew I did too.

She held out an enormous vase of flowers. “I cut them last night. I always do, when a hurricane is coming. If I don't, the storm beats them flat. No use wasting the beautiful things, is it?”

Looking past her shoulder, I saw her Volvo station wagon loaded with a mass of blossoms from her beautiful house and grounds. “Oh, thank you.”

“I can't stay for the ceremony,” Penny said. “I don't want to be caught outdoors when the eye passes, you know.”

I nodded. “And Mr. Friesen?”

“Mr. Friesen . . .” Penny looked at me. She smiled, almost apologetically. “Bill won't be coming today.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, to the woman my mother had betrayed. I winced through another hard contraction. Penny looked at me sharply. I shook my head. “I don't think I'm in labor. Not yet.”

She shook my hand, and then gave me a hug. “I always liked you girls.” She stepped back. “I envied your mother her daughters. Not that I haven't enjoyed my son. But daughters are different, I think.”

I touched my tummy. “I think so too.”

“Give my best to Candace, will you? Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” I said.

The phone rang as I headed back to the kitchen. Angela signed that she would finish arranging the flowers, so I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Toni? We broke down!” It was Carlos.

“We can wait. We aren't going anywhere.”

“You don't understand,” he yelled. “My
car
broke down. My car never breaks down. Does the Batmobile break down? Does Zorro's horse go lame? No. This is not, this is not a spark plug going out. It is not natural.”

“Carlos, you are overreacting—”

“This is a
sign,
Antoinette!”

“Carlos—”

“I am in my car, with a priest, going to a wedding in a hurricane, the car breaks down. Am I
blind?
No. Something is very wrong. I am being told something.”

“Carlos, listen to me. Listen to me, Carlos. You're right. You are right, your car didn't break down by accident. It was
los duendes.
They have been playing a few tricks, but I talked to them just now and we all understand one another.”

Silence.

“Carlos? Are you listening?”

“You talked to
los duendes?
”

“
Sí.
Yes. Everything will be fine with them. Your mother is here, with all the family and the food and the beer, Carlos. We all look forward to seeing you.”

“
Los duendes.
Okay. But what about your mother? She never liked me. What about her? I think she's the one who broke my car.”

“She would be very happy for Candy. I promise you.”

Another long silence. “You speak for her, eh?”

I saw Candy's head peeking down the stairs, scanning the room. “Yes. On this I speak for Momma. She gives her blessing, Carlos. I swear it. Now come as quick as you can. You have a beautiful bride here waiting for you.”

“I got nothing against Candy. Candy I like. La Beauchamp and
los duendes,
these are other matters.”

“I swear I will intercede with them. You should see Candy, Carlos. She's a vision. You better get here before your best man steals her away, is what I think.”

“I got nothing against Candy,” Carlos said.

I gasped as another contraction hit me. What had that been, four minutes? Five? Please God, don't send me into labor now.

“Okay,” Carlos said. “Okay. We're coming. We will be there.
Vamanos, Padre.
Okay, Toni, we will come.”

And they did, ten minutes after the eye of the hurricane had passed over us. The storm wall was howling through the neighborhood, tearing the flat leaves from the banana trees and hammering the last of the crepe myrtle blossoms to the ground. Carlos and the priest staggered in, wind-lashed and blinking the water from their eyes. Carlos had tricked his car into starting again. He had found a short in the electrical system and fixed it with a hank of wire that held almost till he reached us. The last two blocks they came on foot, Carlos and the padre leaning sixty degrees into the wind.

It was a mad, merry celebration, and everyone was drunk on the storm before the first shot of tequila was poured.

My contractions fizzled out, gone completely by the time the ceremony was over, but the strange energy that had filled me since Candy's phone call kept me up and alert all afternoon. I even waltzed, lumbering a few steps when we turned Daddy's battery-powered transistor radio on to KQQK SuperTejano and cleared the center of the ground floor for dancing. Angela had a rare time. She hit it off with La Hag, incredibly enough; the last time I saw them together they were giggling in a corner, Señora Gonzales having challenged Angela to match her in some Mexican drinking game from a girlish past apparently far racier than I had imagined.

Bill Jr. arrived as the hurricane began to weaken, just after the reception had begun. He strode in clutching a bottle of champagne and swung me off my feet—no mean accomplishment, as I had added forty-six pounds to my pre-pregnancy frame. “Twenty-seven hundred and sixty barrels a day!” he shouted in my ear.

“What?”

“We hit a gusher! Twenty-seven hundred and sixty barrels a day! We drilled the wells like you said, and the very last one was a monster!” Which was the kind of glorious day it was—

—for everyone except Carlos and Candy. He was nervous and wet and out of sorts, glancing constantly at me and at the chifforobe, barely looking at his bride. For her part, my sister was beautiful, of course, but not what you would call radiant. I never had seen a wedding at which the bride, when asked if she would take this man, said, “Oh, yeah. Whatever,” and looked fit to spit.