Sister of the Bride (4 page)

Mrs. MacLane came through the swinging door. Her face was flushed and she looked worried. “You children run along to the movies,” she said. “You can take the money out of my purse, and Barbara, you can drive the car.”

“I don't want to go to the movies,” protested
Gordy. “I'm working up a new arrangement for the trio.”

“Come on, Gordy,” said Barbara, distressed by her mother's flushed and anxious face.

“Yes,” said Mrs. MacLane, leaving no doubt in her voice. Gordy was to go to the movies.

“Okay, Ma,” said Gordy, and his mother was too preoccupied to tell her son not to call her Ma.

Barbara knew better than to protest that she did not want to go to the movies either. No girl wanted to be seen in public on Friday night with her younger brother, especially when that brother was wearing sneakers. She considered saying she would not go unless Gordy took off the sneakers and put on shoes, but in the interests of family peace she held her tongue. She would keep her eyes away from his feet and hope that everyone else did, too.

“And what about children?” Mr. MacLane was demanding as Barbara and Gordy were leaving the house. “Have you thought about them?”

“Of course we have thought about children,” was Rosemary's heated answer.

“Whew!” said Gordy as he closed the back door.

“Whew is right,” said Barbara, in rare agreement with her brother.

“I don't see why we have to be shoved out just because Dad and Rosemary are going at one another,” said Gordy. “I don't see why old Rosemary has to go and get married anyway.”

Barbara inserted the key in the ignition, a gesture that had been permitted her for only a few months. “Because she's in love, that's why. And you won't be losing a sister. You'll be gaining a brother-in-law.” And so will I, she thought. A real live brother-in-law was a detail she had omitted from her dreams of a wedding in the family.

Gordy did not appear to be amused at her weak attempt at humor, and they rode in silence down the hill to the main street. Barbara felt embarrassed to be alone with Gordy, since they had quarreled so much lately, and she suspected her brother was experiencing much the same feeling. Barbara searched for a diagonal parking space that she could slide into with ease, but found none. She turned a corner and found an empty space that unfortunately would require her to park parallel under Gordy's critical eye. Gordy, sensitive because he was the only member of the family too young for a driver's license, was inclined to make caustic remarks about Barbara's driving whenever he got a chance. Nervously Barbara pulled up
beside the car parked ahead of the empty space. She put the car in reverse and started turning the wheel while she stepped lightly on the gas. The car moved faster than she had anticipated and banged the bumper of the one behind.

“That's right,” said Gordy. “Take off a couple of fenders while you're at it.”

“Oh, be quiet,” snapped Barbara, as she shifted and tried again. She felt better, and her embarrassment at being alone with her brother was gone. Gordy was back to normal again.

Barbara and Gordy continued to feel shoved aside the rest of the weekend. When they returned from the movie, a gloomy Italian film neither had wanted to see, Mr. MacLane was sitting in the living room puffing on another cigar and staring at the cold ashes in the fireplace. Mrs. MacLane was nowhere in sight, and when Barbara went to her own room she found Rosemary, her face red and blotched from crying, sitting in front of the dressing table putting her hair up on rollers.

“Pretty awful?” Barbara asked softly.

Rosemary nodded. Two tears spilled from her red-rimmed eyes, slid down her cheeks, and plopped into a pile of bobby pins. She looked so miserable Barbara felt like crying herself.
Rosemary wound a roller into a lock of hair as two more tears slid down her cheeks and into the bobby pins.

“If you keep that up your bobby pins will rust,” said Barbara with a shaky laugh.

Rosemary reached for a soggy wad of Kleenex and mopped her eyes.

“He…he didn't talk you out of it, did he?” ventured Barbara.

Rosemary shook her head.

“You could marry him anyway, no matter what Dad says,” Barbara reminded her sister. “You are eighteen.”

Rosemary looked at her own despairing face in the mirror and let out a quavering breath, half sob, half sigh. “B-but I want everything to be h-happy,” she managed to say.

And so did Barbara. A wedding should be a time of joy, and any tears that fell should not be the kind Rosemary was shedding into her bobby pins. They should be tears of happiness. Barbara prepared for bed quickly. After she had turned out the light she heard her mother and father talking long and earnestly in their room. A muffled sniff came from Rosemary's bed. Barbara began to dread the next day.

On Saturday the argument continued. Rosemary said, Couldn't her father see? Times were so uncertain that she and Greg wanted to get married before something terrible happened to the world. Mr. MacLane wanted to know when in the history of the world had times ever been certain. This argument took place at breakfast. By lunchtime the argument had swung around to Mr. MacLane's saying, “And I suppose you are going to tell me two can live as cheaply as one.”

“Certainly not,” was Rosemary's answer, “but two can live as cheaply as two. Greg will be able to work more hours by not taking as many courses. We have it all figured out. The extra money he will earn will equal the allowance I have been getting.”

Please, Dad, thought Barbara, please,
please
don't bring up Rosemary's orthodontist.

“Two married people cannot live as cheaply as two single people,” argued Mr. MacLane. “A married couple is equal to more than the sum of its parts. A couple needs to carry life insurance and hospital insurance. They need to think of the future in a way that single people do not. They need pots and pans and furniture—”

“But think of the saving in rent,” interrupted Rosemary. “Oh, Dad, what's the use? You talk to
Greg when he comes over this evening. He'll tell you. He'll make you understand.”

Mrs. MacLane sent Gordy out to mow the lawn and told Barbara to go downtown and buy some thread and seam tape, so she could shorten Rosemary's coat.

“I'm coming with you,” said Rosemary. And as soon as the girls were out of the house she said to Barbara, “Give me all your small change. I've got to phone Greg. I can't let him walk in tonight without any warning.”

The girls stopped at a glass telephone booth in a service station. Rosemary stepped inside, closed the door, and put through her call, while Barbara watched the expressions that moved across her sister's face. Joy, briefly, when she heard Greg's voice, anxiety, earnestness, a tender smile, and, finally, calm. She emerged from the booth considerably more serene than she had entered it. “You know,” she mused, “maybe Greg is right. He said probably most fathers acted this way when their first daughter got married. And he said not to worry. He will talk to Dad tonight. He will make him see our side.”

“I hope he's right about fathers acting this way over the first wedding in the family,” said Barbara.
“I wouldn't want to go through this again when I get married.” At the same time she thought, Poor Greg, wait till Dad gets hold of him.

“That's the way it has always been,” said Rosemary. “I always have to argue about things with Dad first, and then you come along and want to do the same thing at the same age, and he doesn't even fuss. Remember how he acted when I first started wearing lipstick and bought my first pair of high heels? And two years later you did the same thing, and he didn't even seem to notice.”

“You sound like a regular trailblazer,” said Barbara. “Pocahontas leading Lewis and Clark.”

“You mean Sacagawea.”

“Well, some Indian.”

This seemed to cheer Rosemary, but Barbara was not so sure that marriage was in the same class with lipstick and high heels. They bought the seam tape and thread in the dime store, and when they returned home, Rosemary went to her room and spent the rest of the afternoon studying. Barbara tried to settle down with some irregular French verbs, but she had trouble concentrating on them. She would think she was memorizing the tenses only to discover that, in the back of her
mind, she had been concentrating, not on a verb, but on Rosemary.

By dinnertime both Rosemary and her father seemed calmer, but neither one said much at the table. Mrs. MacLane looked weary and somehow older. The rice had a slightly scorched taste, but no one mentioned it. Only Gordy seemed really hungry. They all understood that Mrs. MacLane had not been able to put her mind on her cooking. Dessert was canned apricots and Girl Scout cookies, a further sign that Mrs. MacLane had no interest in food that evening.

After dinner Gordy, with an air of escaping, left the house with his guitar to practice with the other two members of his trio. Barbara wished she could escape, too, and wondered if she should have accepted Tootie's invitation to the movies. She was torn with a feeling, which was rapidly becoming familiar, of wanting to get away and of not wanting to miss anything. Not long after Gordy left, the doorbell rang, and the two sisters' eyes met in one tense, understanding look. “I guess I'll go study or something,” said Barbara.

“Wait and say hello,” whispered Rosemary, as she opened the door for Greg.

Barbara was surprised when Greg stepped into the room, because he looked older than she had remembered him and much more serious. There was an air of determination about him that she had not noticed before. She also observed that he had a fresh haircut, and she was touched by this. Poor Greg. That haircut told her that in spite of his seeming assurance, he was anxious, too. Rosemary straightened his tie, which really did not need straightening, in a wifely, possessive gesture.

“Hello, Barbara,” he said, accepting Rosemary's gesture with a smile.

“Hello, Greg,” answered Barbara, with a reticence she had not felt when she had thought of him as just another one of her sister's dates. “Well…I guess I had better go study.”

In her room Barbara sat down cross-legged on her bed with her French verbs once more. She heard her mother and father greeting Greg, and for the second time that day her mind was not on her studying. She went over the present subjunctive and the imperfect subjunctive of
avoir
, only to have them slip right out of her mind without a trace. If Rosemary's affairs were not settled one way or another soon, she would probably flunk out of school, because she seemed incapable of
learning anything anymore. She closed her book. This was a waste of time, but she had to find something to do as long as she was trapped in her room. She decided to paint her fingernails, something she rarely did anymore, because she considered the task tiresome and a waste of time.

Barbara opened Rosemary's drawer and found an assortment of bottles she had left behind when she went away to college. She examined the different shades and names and selected a bottle labeled “Chili Bean.” From the living room came the sound of her father's voice speaking seriously. Barbara bit nervously at a hangnail, remembered she was supposed to be manicuring her nails, not biting them, and clipped the hangnail off with the nail scissors. Then she began to smooth her nails with an emery board in long, careful strokes. She had the whole evening before her and only ten fingers to work on.

The sound of voices from the living room was steady. Now Greg was speaking. Now Mr. MacLane. Neither raised his voice, which Barbara felt was a good sign. Never had nails been painted with such meticulous care. Each was filed to a perfect curve, each cuticle was pushed back until perfect half-moons showed. The Chili Bean polish
was tried, rejected, removed with cotton and polish remover, and replaced with a different red. Still the voices murmured on, now Rosemary, now her mother, but most often Greg and Mr. MacLane.

Barbara's mouth felt dry. She wished she dared leave the bedroom to get a drink of water, but she did not want to risk interrupting the conversation at what might be a crucial moment. She finally settled on a third shade of polish, called “Tickled Pink,” and began to paint her nails in careful strokes, sweeping from the half-moon to the tip. She worked slowly and carefully to pass the time. When all ten nails were painted she wafted her fingertips through the air to dry them. The voices continued.

Having nothing else to do, Barbara kicked off her slippers and went to work on her toenails with the same careful strokes she had used on her fingernails. This is a stupid way to spend an evening, she thought impatiently. No matter what Rosemary did, her life would go on, but once having started her toenails she felt she had to finish. When the job was completed she lay back on the bed and fanned her legs back and forth to dry the polish, wishing as she did so that she had been stricter with herself about concentrating on those
unlearned French verbs, which now remained to spoil her Sunday.

A sudden burst of laughter from the living room made Barbara sit up, tense and listening. This was the first encouraging sign since Rosemary's telephone call last Tuesday. There was more conversation and another burst of laughter. What could be going on out there? She longed so much to know that she tiptoed across the room and pressed her ear to the door.

Then Rosemary's heels came clicking down the hall. Barbara skipped away from the door, sat down on the bed, and began innocently to fan her feet once more just as Rosemary burst into the room. Her pink cheeks and sparkling eyes told Barbara all she needed to know. Everything was fine. There was going to be a wedding, after all.

“Greg is going to drive me back to school tonight, so I can get more studying done tomorrow. Oh, I'm so happy I could
die
,” whispered Rosemary, closing the door behind her.

“Oh, Rosemary!” Barbara was so happy for her sister she could find no words equal to the occasion and could only repeat, “Oh, Rosemary!”