Wedding Season (25 page)

I woke to a severe kink in my neck, a ringing phone, and the groggy revelation of my tardiness. Snatching up the garment bag that Gabe had packed for me, I raced, with my head
tilted about thirty degrees to the left on my aching neck, to the room where Desiree and her other bridesmaids were dressing. So far, not so bad. Until I opened the garment bag and discovered that it contained: the wrong dress. The garment bags for my summer wedding duties had been hanging together in chronological order on one side of my closet, so they wouldn’t get lonely. Knowing this, Gabe had packed the first in line. What he didn’t know was that I hadn’t vetted them. Instead of the jaundiced peach, puff-sleeved horror that Desiree had selected for her attendants, I found the sparkly electric orange, off-one-shoulder, disco-ruffled gown I didn’t wear as Maud’s bridesmaid. And Desiree, who needs seven puffy-peach-clad bridesmaids—no more and no less, corresponding to mystical strictures and numero-logical dictates the importance of which I am apparently too spiritually bankrupt to grasp—is not happy at all. Nor, for that matter, am I. As Desiree bellows like a drill sergeant in tulle about my passive-aggressive act of connubial sabotage, the six appropriately dressed bridesmaids cast baleful feline glares at me and do their ineffectual best to soothe the bride.

“No, I will NOT calm down!” Desiree shouts at her maid of honor. “She’s wrecked my wedding! You can’t
stand
the idea of Sheldon being happy, can you? You’ve just never dealt with your abandonment issues, and your life is full of negative energy, and this is how you’ve decided to take your revenge on your father. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Um,” I tell her, trying to get my head into an upright position, and failing. I wonder briefly if I’m delirious from sleep-deprivation, and hallucinating this whole business.

“Where is Marina?” Desiree whimpers. “Someone get her up here!”

Marina is a retired second-string movie actress who, after a highly publicized plastic-surgery fiasco and subsequent
nervous breakdown, moved from Los Angeles to New Mexico. She is now a practicing shamaness and, as Desiree’s primary spiritual adviser, she’ll conduct the wedding ceremony. I met her at breakfast this morning; she called up the local spirits to bless the wedding breakfast, and burned wands of sage in the ballroom during the wedding rehearsal.

“Desiree, honey,” the maid of honor says, “don’t add to the bad vibes. Lie down. Let’s just take some deep breaths and center ourselves. Kendra, do you have your healing stones?”

Desiree allows herself to be guided to the bed, and collapses in a great pouf of billowing white fabric. One of the bridesmaids arranges the skirt of Desiree’s gown. Another sits beside her, opens a little fabric bag, and takes out a handful of shiny pebbles, which she arranges on Desiree’s face and chest, humming quietly and whispering. If I weren’t so tired, I’m relatively sure I’d laugh. Instead, I move toward the phone by the front door to call James, and Desiree sits bolt upright, scattering healing stones in all directions.

“Don’t you move,” she says. “You’re not leaving this room.”

“I was just going to make a phone call,” I tell her. She looks at me severely, but sinks back onto the pillows under the hands of her attendants. I am reaching for the phone when I hear the lock click, and the door swings violently open, clocking me in the face. I fall over. Several bridesmaids shriek. Marina bursts into the room, her purple shamaness gown swirling around her like a minor tornado. She takes note of me: on the floor at her feet, clutching my face. She turns to Desiree, who is laughing and kicking at the bedclothes.

“What’s going on?” Marina asks her.

“Instant karma,” Desiree says. Her giggles edge toward hyperventilation.

“Drop dead,” I contradict, and struggle to my feet.

“Desiree, breathe, for goddess’s sake,” says Marina. “Does anyone have any sage? I’m all out. We need to burn some sage and cleanse this space. Now, what seems to be the problem?”

I consider telling her that the problem, in my spiritually bankrupt opinion, is that my father is marrying a complete and certifiable psycho. Instead I test my face for swelling.

“And the dress is all wrong and she did it on purpose and it’s going to throw the energy balance of the whole wedding off,” Desiree keens as Marina massages her temples. “She’s ruined everything! She’s ruining my marriage! If we get divorced it’ll be your fault, Joy! Do you hear me?”

“Desiree,” Marina coos. “Honey, breathe deeply. Focus your energy. Open your heart and head chakras. Let the light in. Be the beautiful angel.”

Desiree cries harder. Marina looks at me, her holy New Age eyes penetrating my being, her crystal and turquoise jewelry sparkling.

“You’re going to have a hell of a black eye, kid,” she tells me. I nod. Desiree wails. “Desi, pull it together,” Marina says, and slaps her across the face with not insignificant force. It makes a deeply satisfying smack. I am suddenly deeply fond of Marina. “Holy shit, honey,” the shamaness says to the suddenly quiet bride. “It’s just a damn dress. It’s just a ceremony. You know what
symbolic
means? All right, then. That’s better. Now will someone please get this kid an ice pack for her shiner?”

I
N MY SPARKLY
orange disco dress, I march down the aisle with the other bridesmaids to the accompaniment of drums and wooden flutes. My head is stuck at a thirty-degree angle. My right eye swells shut and turns a glorious
shade of purple that just about matches Marina’s dress. The guests gape at me. Gabriel spots me and shakes his head. James gets one look and bursts out laughing. I wink at him with my good eye and peel off to take my place at one side of the chuppah where Marina presides. My father, next to her, trembles visibly. Beyond the massive picture windows, the resort’s golf course sprawls, expensively green. Squinting, I can see where the finely mowed grass ends abruptly, like a child’s drawing, and the apparently infinite desert begins. A couple of golf carts trundle past the window as the bride starts down the aisle. I utter a tiny prayer to no one in particular that the golfers have a good game. It would be too bad if someone’s misadventures at the seventh hole threw the wedding’s energy balance off any further.

“Y
OUR FACE LOOKS
like it’s going to putrefy.” James joins Gabriel and me in the line of guests waiting to congratulate bride and groom.

“So does yours, James. But mine will heal.” I put my head on Gabe’s shoulder. I don’t even have to tilt it, as it’s still stuck at that angle.

“Ha fucking ha. What happened, exactly? Did the other bridesmaids fight you for that fabulous dress?”

“More or less. Let’s just say that mistakes were made. Gabe, when we get back to New York, remind me to label the rest of the garment bags, okay?”

“Yes,” Gabe says. “I’m really sorry, Red.”

“Really not your fault. Ah, Desiree. Congratulations.”

We have arrived in front of my father and his bride. I lean in to give Desiree a kiss on the cheek, and she catches the back of my head and holds my face close to her mouth.

“Joy, I’m so sorry about all that back there,” she hisses, her breath stinging my wound. “I was a little nervous, right?

But listen, if you ever, ever,
ever
tell your father what happened, I’ll totally
kill
you. Okay?”

“I’m sure you will,” I say, looking sideways at my father. “And I think it’s just wonderful. Really. Welcome to the family.”

Dad turns a vast smile on us, which fades as he registers my black eye.

“What happened to you, sweetheart?”

“Oh, I, um. Bumped it on a… thing.” I attempt ease and goodwill. “But it’s fine, Dad. And congratulations, both of you. Look, here’s James and Gabe and—”

“You poor thing.” Desiree oozes maternal concern at me. “And what’s wrong with your neck?”

“Slept on it funny. It seems to be kind of stuck like this, actually.”

“Hold still.” Desiree tosses her veil efficiently over her shoulders and reaches for me. Before I can move out of range, she places a hand on either side of my face and gives my head a sudden and brutal snap to the left. “There,” she tells me. “That should do it.”

I tip my head experimentally back and forth, and find I have regained a full range of motion.

“A woman among women, is my bride,” my father says as he turns to the guests behind us. “She has chiropractic training.”

“I know jujitsu, too.” Desiree gives us a feisty wink. “Black belt! See you at the reception, guys!”

“Let’s go get you some ice for that eye.” Gabe takes my arm.

“Screw the ice.” James takes my other arm as we walk toward the banquet hall. “Let’s go get me a damn drink. You know, Desiree seems kind of okay, actually. In a cheerleader-on-uppers kind of way. I think I may not loathe her quite as much anymore. She amuses me.”

“Even though she had readings from
The Prophet
in the ceremony?” Gabe asks him. “And cried while they read them?”

“I appreciate it when people stay true to type.” James straightens his waistcoat as we approach our table. “It makes life simpler, don’t you think? Human shorthand.”

“It was just a damn ceremony.” I adjust my dress. The sparkles itch.

“Fine.” Gabe eyes me. “So you won’t mind if we get married at Boston Trinity Church, then? Because my mother wants us to do the whole high Episcopal ceremony.”

I trip over a chair.

“Garrett, oh, my god. You’re so bald,” James addresses a man in his early forties seated at our table.

“Tell me again how we’re related?” Garrett rises to greet us. “Because if it’s by blood I’m going to kill myself right now.”

“You’re our father’s brother’s wife’s sister’s child, I think.” I offer my unwounded side for his kiss. “You’re safe. Garrett, this is Gabriel. Garrett is part of the extended Silverman clan. New Jersey branch. Gabriel is my better half.”

A thickening and weary version of the handsome cousin I remember, Garrett shakes Gabe’s hand and pretends to throw a punch at James, who is attempting to polish his bald spot.

“That many degrees of separation should have excused you from the wedding, I think.” James takes a seat next to him.

“We’re Jews, remember? We escape nothing that involves the tribe and food.”

“We didn’t come to your wedding,” James says.

“That’s because you weren’t invited.”

“Right.” My brother nods. “You bastard.”

“James, shut up. That was five years ago. And the wedding was in New Zealand, right, Garrett?” I look to him for confirmation. “Hey, where
is
your wife? We’ve never met her.”

“Couldn’t get the time away from work. Who wants wine? When was the last time we saw one another, anyway?”

“Passover in Princeton.” James holds out his glass. “In 1986, I think. That was the year Josh got drunk on Maneschevitz and puked on somebody’s date.”

“Sounds like fun,” Garrett says. “Let’s reenact it tonight, shall we?”

A
S IT TURNS OUT
, it’s an emotional rather than a physical upheaval that takes place. By the time dinner is over, Gabe and I have heard a great deal more than we might wish about Garrett’s marriage, which, according to him, is a masterpiece of miscommunication and misery. As the floor clears for my father and Desiree’s first dance, Garrett actually begins to weep. Gabe hands him a handkerchief.

“I remember our first dance.” Garrett blows his nose emphatically. “We danced to ’You’re the Tops.’” He takes a deep breath, straightens his shoulders, and wipes his face. “The tops. Well, that’s the breaks, I guess. Baby, I’m the bottom.” He lets out a sharp laugh.

“What’s next, then?” I ask. “Are you going to separate?”

“No. No, no. Why?” Garrett gives me a look of faint surprise.

“Well, I mean. I just thought. If you’re both so unhappy. And you don’t have any kids, and—” I glance at Gabe, who ignores me. I’m sure he’s appalled that I would ask such personal questions at such an inopportune moment. The band strikes up a rendition of “I’m a Believer.” My father and Desiree have begun squirming around on the dance
floor; James looks from them to me and buries his head into his hands.

“No one in my family has ever been divorced,” Garrett says. “No one in hers, either. We didn’t vow until one of us gets bored or unhappy. We vowed until death. Do. Us. Part. Commitment’s a duty. You do what you say you’re going to do, no matter what.” He looks fiercely at each of us in turn. “I know it’s not a popular line of thinking in our divorce-happy, Paxil-popping age. But I believe that when you make a promise, you keep it.” He hangs his head and his eyes well up with tears.

“I know someone else who thinks that way,” Gabe murmurs.

“Um,” I say.

“Hello, Sheldon,” Garrett says to my father, who has just arrived at our table, panting.

“Daughter mine,” he gasps, “may I have the honor of this dance?”

I take the sweating hand he proffers and follow him to the dance floor. I glance over my shoulder and Gabe waves.

“I’m a believer,” he calls after me. Garrett begins to weep again, and Gabe hands him a fresh napkin.

“N
O REST FOR THE WICKED
,” Henry tells me, as we climb out of the car and into the damp, salty summer air of a small town on the far end of Long Island’s less fashionable northern fork, where Erica’s best friend Melody (whom Henry calls “Peroxide Polly”) is getting married this afternoon. “How many is this for you, Joyless?”

“Twelve.” Gabe turns from the driver’s seat to poke at Delia, who somehow managed to nap through the whole drive out here, and is still curled peacefully in the back seat, humming in her sleep.

“Fourteen,” I say. “For me. Thirteen for you.”

“Well.” Henry tosses her hair as she circles the car. “You all don’t even need to have a ceremony. I’m pretty sure you’re already married by osmosis. Hey, sugar bear.” She leans through the open window into the back seat and touches Delia’s cheek. “Dee. Time to get up, baby. We’re going to the chapel.”

Delia lifts her head and smiles sleepily at Henry. I lean against the car and squint toward the bay, watching the breeze ruffle Gabe’s hair. Henry and Delia harmonize “Going to the Chapel” as they collect bags and blankets from the trunk.