The aunts called back minutes after “Jerry’s incident with the police”—those were Aunt Ruth’s words—just to be sure that everything was okay. Jerry and I reassured them that he wasn’t going to jail and, no, he didn’t need any money for bail. They apparently believed us, because we haven’t heard from them since.
Anyway, it is now Saturday morning and I am lying on my back on the air mattress in Cassie’s bedroom. I have my head under a blanket so the sunshine won’t blind me with its good cheer. I’m awake, but I’m trying to ignore that fact. After all, it’s Saturday morning and I had this pleasant dream last night about a wedding on a cruise ship far, far away from here. I couldn’t see the bride in my dream, but I didn’t need to. Just seeing her twisted up in the long white wedding train attached to her dress was enough to set my mind at rest.
The phone rings and I ease the blanket down an inch trying to see the alarm clock Cassie has on the stand beside her bed. I’m lying on the floor so I have to twist my head some to see that it’s one minute past eight. Prime aunt time.
Cassie groans in her sleep and turns over, pulling her covers with her so they will block the light in her eyes.
I hear some kind of muttering come from the living room and then a loud voice. “Julie. Phone for you.”
I don’t know why Jerry can’t decide that those new rules of his apply on Saturday morning. A kind cousin would say I had died in the night and couldn’t come to the phone.
“No,” I say and it comes out half wail and half protest. “Can’t you talk to them?”
I sound pathetic to my ear, but apparently it’s not bad enough to move Jerry’s cold heart.
“They need you,” Jerry says and I swear his voice is growing more cheerful with each word. “Rise and shine. It’s past eight o’clock.”
“On a Saturday morning,” I say. “It’s the universal day of rest.”
“That’s Sunday. The Sabbath,” Jerry says just as if he’s become some kind of Biblical scholar now that he and Doug sat and talked about religious issues last night until midnight.
Cassie and I were there, too, at the coffee shop, but she and I faded a little after eleven when the discussion turned to how dead you needed to be to see heaven. You know, the near-death people who see all those lights. I had never realized there was so much room for discussion in religion. I don’t think Jerry had, either, and he’s taken with it. It’s a whole new field of argument for him.
“Not everyone agrees the Sabbath is Sunday. It could be Saturday,” I say.
“Well, it could be Tuesday, too,” Jerry says. “But the aunts don’t care. They don’t let anyone rest on Saturday.”
“I know,” I mumble as I sit up. I yawn and then make myself stand up beside the air mattress. I stand there a minute, resisting the temptation to fall back down on the mattress in a heap of weary bones.
I’m not about to let Jerry know, but I don’t mind so much talking to the aunts. Not that I’m wild about their timing. But I was beginning to wonder if the reason they hadn’t called last night as I expected was that I had messed up so bad that they weren’t talking to me. If they’re calling me at this time in the morning, though, they are okay with me. The aunts never call strangers until after nine o’clock in the morning no matter what day of the week it is. The eight o’clock rule only applies to family.
I pull my robe off a hook on the wall and put it on over my pajamas before gently opening the door. I look back at Cassie. She’s still managing to sleep. Or, at least, she’s pretending to sleep so she doesn’t have to say good morning to me.
Jerry hands me the phone the minute I step into the living area and close the bedroom door. He’s opened the blinds in this room so the sunlight is even more merciless.
“Hi,” I say into the phone. I try to put enough energy into my voice so that whichever aunt is calling won’t know she got me up out of bed. I might complain to Jerry, but I don’t want a lecture from any of the aunts on how late I must have stayed up the night before if I wasn’t awake until now.
“Julie? Is that you?”
“Hi, Aunt Inga.” I stumble over to one of the chairs at Cassie’s table and sit down.
“We’re getting everything arranged,” Aunt Inga says with a surge of excitement in her voice. I bet she’s not sitting down anywhere. “Your mom is meeting Aunt Ruth and me in Hollywood today so we can start to buy all the things we’ll need for Elaine’s wedding. I just wanted you to know that we’ve reserved some rooms at a hotel near Cassie’s place. Elaine found it on the computer.”
“Wow.” That wakes me up completely. It’s a good thing I have the solid chair beneath me, too. “You’re going to be here? Today? My mom, too?”
I look over to Jerry and he arches his eyebrow at me in a question.
“Today? Here?” Jerry asks me in a frantic whisper.
I nod again, this time more emphatically.
Aunt Inga has been talking. “We have work to do. We need to get started.”
Jerry is standing beside the kitchen counter and he reaches down to pull a saucepan out of the bottom cupboard. I wonder briefly if he is going to bang something with it. I wouldn’t blame him. I’m just curious.
I turn a little in the chair so I’m not watching Jerry. I need to focus. “So that must mean everyone’s okay with using the chapel at the Big M. Did someone tell Elaine about—you know—the funeral stuff?”
“Of course!” Aunt Inga sounds indignant that I think she’d keep a secret like that. “And there’s no need for people to be so squeamish about funeral homes. I can’t believe you didn’t want to tell us you worked in one. We’re not a family who thinks we’re too good to work with dead people. I mean, well, you know what I mean. Everyone dies. They can’t help it.”
“Yes, but no one wants someone dead at their wedding,” I say without thinking because I can’t stand not knowing what Jerry is going to do with that pan. Then I realize what I’ve said. “Not that anyone will die at Elaine’s wedding. Or be dead. I promise. The last funeral at the Big M is Tuesday morning. Then it’s pretty well shut down through Thanksgiving weekend.”
I specifically asked Mr. Z about that and he made some joke about death taking a holiday. I think it’s an old movie or something so I smiled at him, but waited for him to clearly say that there would be no dead people left at the Big M over that weekend.
“Good. That gives us time to get everything ready,” Aunt Inga says. “We’re going to make the phone calls before we leave Blythe this morning so we won’t get there until this afternoon. That’s one reason I’m calling. We need the address for the place where you work so we can tell people where it is.”
I close my eyes. Somehow I was hoping it wouldn’t really come to this. Even though Jerry has measured every stone in the Big M chapel by now, I still thought a miracle would happen and the wedding would take place somewhere else. But once all of the guests are told to come to the Big M, it won’t matter if the wedding does take place somewhere else. All of the people will still be at the Big M wondering what I, Julie White, have done to mess things up this time.
There’s no help for it so I open my eyes. “The entrance to the parking lot is a couple of blocks past Vine on Hollywood going west. The street address is 6314 Hollywood Boulevard and there’s usually some more parking off of Cosmo Street, too.”
“I’m writing it all down,” Aunt Inga says. “That was 63-what Hollywood Boulevard?”
I see Jerry pull the oatmeal box down from a shelf so I relax. He’s just doing the domestic thing. No banging there.
“It’s 6314 Hollywood Boulevard.”
“Got it,” Aunt Inga says and there’s triumph in her voice. Aunt Inga knows how to celebrate her success with little things as well as big things in life.
“You sound good,” I can’t help but say. “How is Aunt Ruth doing?”
“She’ll do fine. Especially when your mother comes to help. Aunt Ruth couldn’t stand it if your mother showed her up in the coping department.”
&nbs
p; Now I know why I should have stayed in bed. I was worried about me and my mom making a scene. I didn’t think about my mom and Aunt Ruth. “Do you think there will be trouble with the two of them?”
My mother and Aunt Ruth probably haven’t exchanged ten words with each other since my mother left Blythe eighteen years ago. That’s not even one word a year. My mother and I have passed a lot more words around and my feelings toward her are still a little raw. I don’t give Aunt Inga any time to answer my question because I’m not sure I want to hear the answer. “You’re sure Elaine isn’t going to change her mind at the last minute and decide to get married on that cruise?”
“I’m not sure of anything,” Aunt Inga says. “Except for the fact that we are a family and families figure these things out.”
Aunt Inga, to her credit, always thinks of our family as a whole. It was mostly Aunt Ruth and Elaine who were always so insistent on their half this and half that, as if they had some inherent fascination with fractions. Believe me, neither one of them like math. They just didn’t really want to claim any close kinship with my mom and me.
“Elaine would be dragging home a small trunk if she was planning to do that cruise,” I say just in case Elaine was making preparations that Aunt Inga didn’t know about. “One thing I know for sure and that’s that she’s going to get married in that dress she got from Paris. And she’s going to have her train behind her. No matter where she says ‘I do,’ she’ll be in that dress of hers.”
Aunt Inga chuckles. “She’s bringing that dress with her when we drive to Hollywood this afternoon so I think she’s still planning to get married in your chapel.”
“Good,” I say, but I have to swallow to get the word out. “Maybe Jerry can remeasure how long the aisle is just to be sure there’s enough room for that train.”
I know there’s enough room, I just don’t want Elaine to settle for using the chapel at the Big M if she secretly wants to do the cruise.
“Well, I have a lot to do before we can come,” Aunt Inga says. “We’ll call on Elaine’s cell phone when we get into Hollywood.”
“I’ll see you then,” I say as we both hang up. Well, I don’t quite hang up. I have to walk over to the kitchen counter to do that and I think I’ll just sit here a minute.
“That bad?” Jerry says from where he’s standing by the stove. He’s stirring the oatmeal and has the raisin box on the counter beside him.
“It’s my worst nightmare come true.”
Jerry laughs at that. “Good one.”
I give him a weak smile in return. “Yeah, right.”
I debate on going back to bed, but decide there is no point. The lazy, all-is-well feeling that I had lying in my bed earlier is destroyed for now.
“Did you make coffee?” I say even though I know I would smell it if Jerry had made any.
He takes the hint like a good cousin and reaches over to turn on the switch that will make the coffee start to brew. One of the things I have learned from living with Cassie is to set the coffeepot up the night before. It does make the mornings go better. I wonder if that’s why she’s always such an optimist. She knows she has her coffee ready to go.
Ah, yes, I can hear the water starting to sizzle in the pot. There is hope.
I could sit here all day, but I have to prepare for the arrival of the aunts. And Elaine, of course. Aunt Inga didn’t mention Uncle Howard so I wonder if he will come. It’ll be like having a family reunion. We always have deviled eggs at our family reunions. I look up at Jerry. He knows more about cooking than I ever suspected.
“Do you think we’ll need to feed the aunts?” I ask.
“They’re going to be here for dinner?” Jerry asks.
I almost smile. That thought took all of the good cheer right out of him. He’s not the only one who can ruin a good morning.
“They wouldn’t want us to fix them dinner, would they?” Jerry asks, clearly appalled. “I only know how to cook breakfast. I can’t see Aunt Ruth having oatmeal for dinner. The aunts never visited me when I lived in Blythe.”
“You still live in Blythe,” I say just to remind him. “Besides, there’s nothing wrong with oatmeal. I’m sure they ate it for dinner sometimes when they were kids.”
My grandfather never had much money, not when he was married to either one of the grandmothers. And my grandmother couldn’t cook so she might have made oatmeal for dinner. She’d, of course, serve it wearing one of those scarves of hers, though, and have everyone pretend they were eating in a French restaurant so they might not have minded so much.
“Oatmeal like this?” Jerry looks uncertain as he picks the pan up off the stove.
“Well, it’s healthy food,” I say before I decide to let him off the hook. “Maybe we should just find a restaurant where we can all sit down to eat, though.”
“I have to wash my socks today,” Jerry says as he walks the oatmeal over to the table and sets it on a trivet. “And my T-shirts. Is there a Laundromat around?”
I nod. “I have to do a load of wash, too.”
Jerry sits down even though neither one of us have bowls or spoons. Since he’s clearly in overload, I stand and walk over to the cupboard to get what we need.
I can tell that getting ready for the aunts is going to take the better part of the day. Which, when I think about it, is okay. If I’m worrying about getting ready to pass the aunt inspection, I won’t be worrying about seeing my mother again.
I set the bowls down on the table and sit back down. It’s not been that long ago that I saw my mother in Las Vegas, but this will be the first time my mother has come to my place instead of Aunt Inga’s place. Okay, rest easy. I’m not doing a Jerry here. I know it’s not really my place; it belongs to Cassie. But it’s my first independent place and my mother is coming. I feel the urge to dust something.
It’s the middle of the afternoon before the urge to clean everything in sight subsides. I am sitting in Cassie’s living area and I am wearing a dress. On a Saturday. I don’t feel so bad, however, because I look over at the sofa and Jerry is sitting there in a new T-shirt. He got so nervous, he drove to the mall and bought another one. It’s brown, of course, but it has a black rim around the neck. The only one here who isn’t nuts is Cassie. She’s sitting on the floor by her coffee table and pinching some yellow leaves off some plant. She told me the leaves needed to be pinched off instead of cut off because the plant would do better that way.
There’s no accounting for plants. I’d rather have a leaf cut off, nice and surgically clean, rather than have someone squeeze the life out of me.
There’s a ring on the phone and I swear Jerry and I both sigh in relief. We weren’t looking forward to everyone coming earlier, but now we’re caught up in the agony of waiting and thinking anything would be better than just sitting here, even having the aunts actually arrive.
“Hello,” Jerry says into the phone. He picked it up, because he is sitting closest to it.
Jerry gives me a nod so I know it is the aunts.
“Yeah, they gave us a key,” Jerry says as he puts his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. “They want to meet us at the Big M and see the chapel first thing.”
“Oh, well,” I say. “I guess that’s fine.”
There’s a weekend guard at the Big M and Mr. Z had told him all about the wedding plans so I’m sure there’s no problem if we go look in the chapel area. It’s just that I wasn’t prepared for everyone to see the Big M yet.
I should have spent some time this morning bracing myself for the viewing. I doubt it will go smoothly. Elaine will want to do something foolish like put orange glitter on the brass candle sconces in the entry hall and I will spout off something about how she has no appreciation for tradition. Then she will say it’s her wedding day and she wants everything perfect and I will say if she wanted perfection she should have taken the cruise. And then—I stop myself. I don’t need to have arguments in my head with Elaine. This is an aunt day. I need to think of ways to avoid argu
ments.
I smile.
“What’s that for?” Jerry looks at me suspiciously. “You planning something?”
“No,” I say. “I’m planning to be nice.”
Jerry grunts as if he doesn’t believe me.
The first thing anyone will want to see when they step out of the cars at the Big M is probably the restrooms. I relax a little. If Elaine wants to do something strange like put orange soap in there, it would be okay.
Jerry, Cassie, and I meet everyone at the Big M.
Aunt Inga drove her car down and my mother apparently went to Blythe yesterday so she could drive over with Aunt Inga. Aunt Ruth, Elaine and Uncle Howard arrive first and, even with only the three of them, I can tell it was a crowded ride. Elaine was in the backseat and she brought her dress. The garment bag was on the seat next to her and I saw the box for the train in the trunk when Elaine opened it to get her purse.
“You put your purse in the trunk?” I say and then I remember to be nice. “That’s a good idea actually.”
Everyone else is standing around stretching from the long drive so they aren’t paying any attention to me and Elaine.
“It’s supposed to control impulse spending,” Elaine says with a little pride in her voice. “I’m practicing to be a responsible wife. Gary insists we have a budget. The purse in the trunk was his idea.”
“Ooo-kay, then,” I say. “You must have covered finances in premarital counseling.”
“We don’t need premarital counseling,” Elaine says smugly. “Gary has good instincts about what to do in most situations.”
I nod as though I understand her. “So, I guess he’s figured out how to handle his parents when they want to do things like stop your mother from being at your wedding?”
“We’re still working on his parents,” she says, only now she seems more human because there’s a hint of worry in her eyes. “Gary says we should be patient. They’re not used to being in-laws and having to share us with another set of parents.”
Elaine glances over at her mother and father who are standing beside Aunt Inga’s car and looking at the sidewalk leading up to the Big M.
Going to the Chapel Page 22