“That you, Ronnie?”
“Yes, sir. You dozed off.”
The car was pulling up to the entrance of Emma’s apartment building.
“Ronnie, did men with masks stop the car, make me get out?”
“No, Mr. Tremaine. We had a very smooth ride.”
Emma was waiting in the lobby with her bags, which Viktor carried out to the car. I reached in my pocket and to my relief found my wallet was there. I gave Viktor a generous tip.
Since she was taking a new substance called scopolamine prescribed by her doctor, Emma’s Ménière’s was doing much better with the ride to Connecticut. Also, her weekly experimental session in New York seemed to be helping.
“Dr. Litman had me to lunch,” she told me as the car got on I-95. “What a charming, knowledgeable gentleman he is, certainly fond of you, which shows good taste. Said we needed to have lunch because he always likes to know the people he marries. He says he’s bringing a lady with him to our wedding, a young chick of eighty-two who still sings at the Met. By the way, I brought something I once sang in a Gilbert and Sullivan show for you and me.”
“Oh, I don’t know…”
“You have a very nice voice,” she said in a commanding tone, and she handed me a piece of paper with the words on it. “Is your mother coming?” she asked.
“No, sent her regrets, more of the same: it’s just too far to go at her age. But she’s sending a wedding present of a dozen frozen lamb chops from her husband’s lamb chop company.”
Emma said, “I’m so grateful that Molly”—this was her mother’s former partner at Here Comes the Bride—“could make the trip. And you can’t see it yet, but let me tell you, she’s here bringing me the most divine wedding dress she’s created for me. I don’t think it’s cheating,” she added teasingly, “to tell you that it’s light pink, with a short skirt, billowy at the shoulders, a ribbony thingee for my neck and hair…”
“And I’m wearing my favorite jacket with the sleeve back in place, a new burgundy bow tie and shirt, and a big white rose in the jacket’s lapel.”
“What a simply divine couple we will be!” She spun around and plunked her head on my lap, closed her lovely eyes, and promptly dozed off.
chapter thirty
We pulled into the Eppses’ driveway as the early shades of evening were starting to fall. The parking area across from the house was filled with the cars of guests for our wedding. A hum of voices and music greeted us. Emma went into the house, where she would remain until the ceremony began. I went to the wedding area, where I was to function as a kind of greeter, although Charlie was the designated host. The entire front of the house had been turned into a stunning panorama. Charlie had really outdone himself for us. The grounds were covered with multicolored lanterns, and hooded candles peppered the lawn like regimented dandelions. Dinner tables beflowered and illuminated with candles in hurricane lamps were arranged around a sleek surface laid over the grass for dancing. At the end of the lawn, its back to the surf, was a lovely altar for Doc Lou to preside over. Intertwined plants and flowers infused with multicolored stones highlighted the altar. All of it had the fragrance of the incumbent dinner wafting over it. A white-jacketed barman presided over a well-stocked dispensary, and hors d’oeuvres were making the rounds. I was surprised by the number of guests, quite beyond what I had anticipated. I thought the distance from New York would deter them, but I guess many lawyer friends and business associates wanted to see me finally submit to the yoke of matrimony. As the evening darkened, the torches and lanterns were illuminated above the lighted candles in the grass, and Lois’s boyfriend, Tim, and his “Triple Threats” began to play seriously, which was the signal for everyone to freshen their drinks and occupy the chairs in front of the altar.
The band tapered off and Doc Lou took his place at the altar. “Good evening, all,” he said. “I’m Dr. Louis Litman, a doctor of medicine who’s also ordained to perform marriages, which have mostly been on behalf of my patients. In fact, this is my fiftieth such marriage, and it’s for a young man who’s been my patient since he was a boy, and his deceased father before him. It’s my great joy to wed him tonight to a remarkable young woman from London. As a man of medicine I am fully aware of their mutual needs, but as a man of marriage I am equally aware of how, in trying circumstances, the infusion of an uplifting marriage can be a great facilitator. And that facilitation is love, not something that I can prescribe from the drugstore but something I can recognize and esteem this evening. They seek to bind their love into this marriage, and they have asked you to participate in their moment of joy, the start of their new life together. Swallows will fly, rosebuds burst open, apples turn red, joining our celebration. Please start the music.”
I went to stand beside Doc Lou as Tim began to play on his keyboard. Emma, in her lovely pink dress, carrying a bouquet of gardenias, with Lydia beside her, came from the house down the row of candles and torches to the altar, a beguiling sight. Everyone applauded as she stood before Doc Lou and he put his arms around the two of us. “After fifty years of guiding couples into matrimony, none has resounded with me like yours. So it is fitting that I have decided that this will be my final marriage. I have learned much from doctoring people—about everything from suffering to the recoupment of good health—and I have had a great joy in uniting happy couples in matrimony. Now, in my eighty-ninth year, I have this wonderful farewell marriage to perform for a man who is as close to me as my own son, and for a splendid woman with whom he is going to spend the rest of his life. Chet Tremaine, please place the ring on your bride’s finger.”
Charlie, who was standing beside me, handed me the antique ring that Emma and I had chosen. I had a little trouble sliding it on her finger. Emma, when similarly commanded and handed a ring by Lydia, slipped hers on my finger with ease.
Doc Lou said, “Are you, Emma Vicky, and you, Chet Tremaine, ready to exchange your vows?”
We both said we were.
“Please proceed.”
Emma smiled at me and we closely faced each other. I was as nervous as a cat caught in a bramble bush.
Emma: “None shall part us from each other—”
Me: “One in life and death are we.”
Emma: “All in all to one another—”
Me: “I to thee and thou to me!”
Emma: “Thou the tree and I the flower—”
Me: “Thou the idol; I the throng—”
Emma: “Thou the day and I the hour—”
Me: “Thou the singer; I the song!”
Together: “None shall part us from each other, one in life and death are we: All in all to one another—I to thee and thou to me!”
Beaming, Doc Lou said: “With the authority vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
Emma came into my arms, and when our lips pressed together the faint taste of teardrops came through the kiss. The band erupted with happy music and a rousing cry rose from the guests, who crowded us both with hugs and kisses, igniting the celebration that would take us into the night. I had never felt such jubilation, such unadulterated joy—they were happy for us, as happy as we were ourselves. I caught Emma’s hand and started to dance with her, which enticed everyone to the dance floor with much cutting in and out.
The lights turned up as dinner was announced. No ordinary wedding dinner, not with Charlie Epps in charge. A full-blown clambake, suckling pigs straight from the twirling pits onto decorated platters, pheasants adorned with their plumage, hot biscuits, an endless flow of gustatory surprises. Emma and I were at a table with Lydia and Charlie himself near the dance floor, in full view of all of our guests. Emma said she felt like Cleopatra. Toasts began popping up from table to table to table. Also some self-induced entertainment. The three British actresses in their billowy dresses took to the dance floor and sang “I Could Have Danced All Night,” with a marvelo
us whirling and dipping choreography to accompany it. Doc Lou was next with a very funny “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” giving it a quite good English accent. Then Doc’s eighty-two-year-old Met youngster, Melinka Marova, took over with a full-blown rendition of an aria from Carmen, with Tim and company’s accompaniment, her big operatic voice and rhythmic movement giving everyone a thrill. The two London actors followed in her wake with an amusing acrobatic tap dance, with lively improvised support from Tim’s trio.
The lights fell low and a searchlight illuminated a huge sculptured wedding cake being wheeled in to the oohs and aahs of the assembled admirers. As the cake was being served, a small flat raft was anchoring offshore and a stunning barrage of fireworks began to paint the sky with a stream of fiery, floating, dripping, interactive beauties. There was a checkerboard of fountains, fighting bears exploding, an airplane doing loop-de-loops—all magic in the sky, with a farewell shower of arrows shooting every which way, lighting up the night.
A cry of approval shimmied up from us spectators. Charlie turned up the lights and announced: “How about a midnight swim?” The swimming pool lights above and below the water came on. There were plenty of takers heading toward the pool, while others went to the bar for refills. Doc Lou, a foaming beer in hand, was still doing remembrances of Noël Coward. Meanwhile, Sophie Gleason, my Nepal sponsor, was at the keyboard singing a torrid “Too Damn Hot” to her own bang-bang accompaniment.
“Well, Mrs. Wife,” I said to Emma, “what do you say?”
“I say, Mr. Husband, we tiptoe away throwing farewell kisses to the wind for everyone.” Emma took my ring hand, put it on top of hers, and said, “This is a dream, isn’t it?”
“Of course.”
“What happens when we wake up?”
“We won’t.”
“How come?”
“We’re dream makers.”
“We are, aren’t we?”
“You betcha! One small dream after another.”
Ronnie had brought the car into the driveway. No one saw our departure. Emma was a bit Ménière wobbly as I helped her into the backseat and the Subaru pulled away. Bhairav and goddess Kishani sat on top of the dashboard, facing us. I asked Ronnie to stop on Surf Road, which runs along the water. I stood up on the seat and opened the full hatch in the roof. I lifted Emma up and we stood side by side, arms around each other, our faces to the sky.
“Let’s take a slow drive the long way along the water, Ronnie,” I said, and cued up the copy of the goddess Kishani’s recording that I had put on my phone.
Her soft voice began to serenade the night. A panoply of stars hung low overhead and a gentle surf wind played on our faces.
“I just saw a shooting star,” Emma said. “Look, there goes another! Oh, what a heavenly wedding, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, with one exception,” I said.
“What can that possibly be?”
“Lifting you up, just now, I ripped off that same damn sleeve.”
I raised the sleeve above our heads, letting it fly in the wind, our wedding banner.
acknowledgments
The Hotchner family would like to thank Nan Talese for standing beside Hotch from the beginning of his career till the very end. Paul Bresnick also never stopped believing in Hotch from the moment he started representing him. Thank you, Paul. Anna Kaufman, our editor, put her soul and her talents into this book, and the family will be forever grateful for her efforts reflected in these pages. We also salute Dan Novack for his words, sharp wit, and legal expertise. The family would also like to thank the good folks at Anchor: publisher Suzanne Herz; our publicity and marketing team, Julie Ertl and Annie Locke; the fabulous production team, including Barbara Richard, Edward Allen, Carolyn Williams, Aja Pollock, Rima Weinberg, NaNá Stoelzle, and Nicholas Alguire; and the magical, indefatigable cover designer, Michael Windsor. Finally, this book could not have been completed without Mara Neville-Abercrombie’s constancy and intellect, Ana and Rony Trabanino’s daily care and big hearts, and Monica Naryko’s strength, spirit, and patience.
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Kissing the Wind Page 14