by Lee Irby
“It’s beautiful,” she declares with her hands clasped beneath her chin. This appraisal seems to appease my mother, who gazes beatifically at Mead, who in turn continues to stand as stiff as a corpse, more fly caught in a spider’s web than man about to take a wife.
“Do you have your own vows or do you want me to use something more traditional?” the minister asks.
“The vows! We have our own.”
My mother hurries over to her big shoulder bag that’s perched on a chair and begins to paw through it. Why isn’t Mead helping her? She’s having trouble walking, and yet he keeps his distance from her. I wonder who called him on the phone…his ex-wife, whose existence is never spoken of but who hovers over these proceedings like an apparition? I never did ask my mother why she was having a panic attack in the parking lot of the restaurant where the woman works.
“I think I left them at home,” she says, dejectedly tossing her bag onto the floor.
“Are you sure?” Mead asks.
“Did you bring a copy?”
“Was I supposed to?”
“It’s no big deal,” the minister gently interjects. “You can always e-mail them to me tonight or tomorrow morning, just to be on the safe side. But just to be clear, the vows are what comes next, right after the procession?”
“Maybe we should just use the traditional vows.” My mother frowns. “You know, ‘to have and to hold’ and all that. It might be easier. The more I think about it, our vows were a little hippie-dippie. We were trying too hard to be different.”
“Whatever you want,” Mead quickly agrees.
“Can we try it once the traditional way, just so I can hear it?”
The minister is a seasoned pro and walks them through a very vanilla rendition that is quite familiar but still strangely moving. During high school my mother dated a few men, got her heart broken by one, but I never entertained the idea that she’d get married. But here she is, with-this-ring-I-thee-wed. Even though the traditional vows are hackneyed to the point of meaninglessness, two people can become one; a loving spouse can ease life’s burdens and fill in the empty spaces. Only a person who’s been cast into the wilderness alone can fully appreciate the calming succor of a real partner, a soul mate who can soothe the savage beast.
“What do you think?” my mother asks Mead after the first read-through.
“Sounded fine to me. But I’ll defer to you.”
“It was flat. Something was missing. We should use our vows even if they’re too over-the-top. Second weddings are all about taking chances, huh?” She turns and faces her musicians. “Start the recessional right as we’re turning to walk out. Let’s try that one time.”
At that very moment, a park ranger enters the room. The music stops, silence falls.
“Pardon the interruption,” he says firmly but calmly, “but this building is being evacuated. If you’d all follow me, we’ll make our way outside.”
Mead’s mother begins screeching like a barn owl as we gather our things. Turns out, someone has phoned in a bomb threat. Oh, and the choice for the recessional song: “The Long and Winding Road” by the Fab Four.
13
Only later at dinner we do learn that similar threats were simultaneously phoned into Chimborazo Park and the Museum of the Confederacy. Gibson discovers this unhappy news flash via Instagram while a waiter clears our table of dirty plates.
“What’s Chimborazo Park?” she asks, for once joining in on the conversation instead of keeping her eyes fixed on a small screen.
“It was a big Confederate hospital,” replies Dan. “It was actually very well organized and successful from a medical standpoint. In high school DJ volunteered there as a docent at the museum.”
Oh yes, I remember that being thrown into my face, as I skipped from crappy job to crappy job. But who’s laughing now? That’s cruel of me. DJ never asked to be my yardstick and rival. Like his parents, he’s never said a bad thing about another person, even when it was deserved.
“Who on earth would want to blow it up?” my mother blurts out, nearly knocking over her glass of wine as she wildly gestures her incredulity. “What’s the world coming to? What if Tredegar is closed tomorrow, too? What are we supposed to do? We booked the site eight months ago.”
“We’ll have the wedding at our house,” Mead claims in a deadpan. Serious proposal? Mock suggestion? Impossible to tell with him. No matter, my mother isn’t buying it.
“We can’t fit forty people in the living room!”
“Sure, we can. Second weddings are about taking chances.”
“I don’t want to clean the house on my wedding day. Oh my God, I think I’m going to faint.”
My mother is drunk. Normally no son would divulge an unsavory detail about his mommy, but in this case her inebriation will have consequences, and will change the course of my story. I don’t control these events…clearly the reverse is true. I’m the one being manipulated, followed, stalked, and threatened. Were it up to me, Leigh Rose and I would be on a plane bound for Paris and her lawyers would have already drawn up a prenup. As it is, I’m sitting at a big round table at the Tobacco Company, the bastion of Shockoe Slip, Richmond’s oldest hip area ushered in during the initial phase of yuppie gentrification in the late 1970s. Before becoming a restaurant and bar, the building was a tobacco warehouse and still retains the rough brick walls to prove it.
“Is your mom okay?” Paula whispers to me.
“I’ve never seen her drink so much,” I sheepishly admit, idly waving a fork at my steak, the first one I’ve ordered in about twelve years. The return of the carnivore perhaps heralds the arrival of a new version of self—one tough enough to take on Jeb Wardell and John Graziano. But the steak tastes horrible and I feel stupid for ordering it. I want to crawl under a rock and die. I’m grateful when the waiter removes the plate from my sight.
“It’s from all the stress. I can relate.”
“She’s going to be hungover on her wedding day. The something-blue will be her gills if she doesn’t slow down.”
“I was so burnt out for both of mine! I think I was wheeled down the aisle in a gurney, with a saline IV to fight off the dehydration. Not a great way to begin a marriage.”
“I eloped.”
“Oh, how romantic…and simple. No muss, no fuss.”
“My ex-wife wasn’t big on ceremony.”
“I almost flew to Vegas with a man to elope. He chickened out at the last minute. We were in a cab almost all the way to Dulles, and he just looked at me and said, ‘This has all the makings of a bad idea.’ And he was right. He was sleeping with about twenty different women at the time.”
Normally a woman this candid and open would be someone I peppered with questions, eager to gobble up every overlooked detail. Instead I nod like a bobblehead figurine and try not to belch. Paula and I were expected to hit it off, since we’re both single and well educated. I want to stress that there’s nothing in the world wrong with Paula; it’s just that I can withstand no more. Acute observers might accuse me of waiting a bit too long before applying the brakes. There’s good reason to fault me for lacking self-reflection. I feel remorse, some might say, only because I’ve been caught. But that’s a complete misunderstanding of my situation. Guilt has been with me every step of the way, not as a chide but as a coach, urging me on to new lows. Why can’t I dismiss the confrontation at the Jefferson Hotel? I had no future with Leigh Rose even before I “ran into” John Graziano…right? Or was our burgeoning love sabotaged by greedy hucksters out to gobble down her money?
“I hear you write books,” Paula tries again, shrugging off my placid exterior and inability to chitchat. “Novels, correct?”
“Yes, guilty as charged.”
“That takes some serious courage. I know I didn’t have it. Law school was the only place for a bitch like me.”
“Whereas law school would’ve eaten me alive.”
“Are you writing anything now?”
She’s intere
sted in my writing career! Do you know how many nights since the divorce I longed for a woman I could just talk to about what’s dearest to me? Now here she is in the flesh, taking great pains to include me in the conversation when she could just very well chatter on with Graves or Gibson or her brother or Sylvia, anyone else at the table…and yet I feel nothing. Just emptiness. “Not really,” I mumble. “I’m between projects.”
“It must be so hard to find the time and the energy. And the discipline it must take!”
I’d love to tell her all about my ironclad intestinal fortitude that consists mostly of me wringing my hands in defeat, but before I can, Graves stands up to address us. At first I surmise that he’s giving a toast, but apparently not.
“I just want to say good-bye to everyone,” he announces with as much gaiety as he can muster, “but I need to go meet some friends who need my help. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
“You’re leaving?” my mother cries in a voice rendered shrill with wine. In Graves’s defense, it is almost nine o’clock and he didn’t order dessert. Gibson is also looking a little bored as well. It’s a miracle that the “kids” lasted this long.
“I’ve got somewhere to be. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
“No one’s worried, Graves,” Mead chimes in, cheeks puffed out in manly confidence and legs crossed at a jaunty angle. “We’re just sorry to see you go. Who is it you’re meeting up with?”
“Some people.”
“Nameless people, I get it. One isn’t Avery, is it?”
Graves recoils defensively, and then stiffens, jutting out his chin as if daring his father to take a swing. “Not just him. He might be there, I won’t lie.”
“Where are you going, exactly? What kind of help do your friends need?”
“Don’t interrogate the boy!” Aunt Paula intercedes, every inch the older-sister-cum-lawyer. “He’s an adult and can make his own decisions.”
Not wanting to stifle the buoyant mood of the dinner, or perhaps plied by an excess of wine as well, Mead relents and waves his progeny off with a dismissive flick of his wrist. Graves bows and then takes his leave, hurrying out before his father changes his mind. In his wake, Gibson’s mouth drops, stung by the unfairness of her brother’s escape while she remains chained to the grown-ups table, sitting across from Dan and Sylvia, who’ve been ladling out friendly advice by the gallon. She looks to have had her fill.
“I need to go, too,” she says with a decided lack of specificity.
“No dessert?” my mother brays. She is officially hammered. Her eyes have become cross-eyed and she seems to be listing in her seat, about to topple over any minute.
“Excuse me,” I say to Paula, hopping to my feet and going over to my mother, who takes my hand and kisses it.
“I’m so glad you came! Isn’t this fun? Isn’t it?”
“Are you getting tired?”
“Isn’t Paula pretty? She’s so pretty. So, so pretty.”
“Maybe I can take you home? Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“Leave?” my mother sighs in exasperation. “We haven’t had dessert. What’s wrong with everyone tonight? Did you talk to Graves? How did he seem to you? He really isn’t the same kid. He’s always so angry. You were never angry. You were such a sweet boy. Are you dating anyone? Oh, Eddie, have you ever thought about moving back to Richmond? You seem so unhappy up there in Ithaca. Maybe I’m wrong but I think you could use a change of scenery.”
I don’t have the heart to tell her that indeed changes are looming for me. “I’m getting tired,” I tell her, faking a yawn. “Yesterday just about did me in. We should go soon.”
“Why did they call in those bomb threats? Who’s behind it? Do we know yet?”
“No. Chances are, it’s just a group of radicals who want attention.” The acolytes of Gramsci, out to foment revolution among a somnambulant populace—I should be attempting to link up with them, not dismissing their subversion.
“They’re cowards, is what. They’d better not ruin my wedding day! Or they’ll have real trouble on their hands.”
I step over and tap Mead lightly on the shoulder. He spins around and seems stunned to see me, and I halfway expect him to raise his hands in surrender. I quickly explain the situation and we quickly formulate a plan. I’ll take Gibson and my mother home, and he’ll get his sister and mother (and her nurse) to their hotel. I volunteer to go get my car, which is parked several blocks away, so that my mother won’t have to stagger over the cobblestones with her bum knee.
Before leaving, I say good-bye to Dan and Sylvia, two decent people who’ve held on to the moral center of the universe while the rest of us long ago let go. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to speak more with them, but we promise to catch up tomorrow at the reception. “DJ’s coming and he’s bringing the boys,” Sylvia announces excitedly.
“Great. I look forward to seeing him.”
“He’s always asking about you, you know, whether you’ve published a book yet.”
“Not yet. Not in this universe anyway.” Politely Sylvia chuckles, but we both understand all too well that disappointment chokes me like kudzu.
“We just got back from a mission to Haiti,” Dan jumps in, and I know that he can spend hours describing the incredible work he does there, but my mother is literally about to put a lampshade on her head.
“I really need to go,” I cut in, before Dan begins his heroic narration. I give Paula a wave, and then she bounds up from her chair to catch up with me. My heart leaps into my throat. When females pursue me, I usually find a way to screw it up. Once in Prague, where I spent a semester on a Fulbright, I was walking across the Charles Bridge on a moonlit night, the River Vltava sparkling in dreamy iridescence, when I ran into another American scholar, a specialist on Czech birth control issues—talk about getting served on a silver platter! She invited me back to her flat just off Wenceslas Square, and all I had to do was play it cool and let her research interests act as an aphrodisiac—but we ended up having an argument about Lacan’s notion of Otherness—there was a time when I never, ever considered the possibility that I could be wrong! Such heady times! To be so in love with yourself!
“Is anything going on later?” Paula asks me hopefully.
“I’m not sure. I’ve got to take my mother home.” And then deal with my sort-of girlfriend who’s out to destroy me. Or try to find the woman I fell in love with buying shoes. Or flee from the police who must be minutes away. One thing I cannot do is make love to you, Paula. The arrogant boy-king of Prague is long dead. Or is he? Because I really can’t help myself…“But I might want to see some music later if you’re up for it.”
“Yeah! For sure! Let me know if you’re headed out. I’ll give you my number. I could really use a fun night.”
“Cool.” I fish out my phone and input the numbers she rattles off. Then I finally head for the exit. But a hand on my shoulder detains me.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
It’s Gibson, who looks like the spitting image of Scarlett Johansson in a strapless white dress that displays the ample curves of her shapely form. Every man in the restaurant is gawking at her as we walk toward the exit. Many must think I’m the luckiest dude in Richmond tonight—if they only knew the truth.
“I’m going to get the car,” I tartly explain.
“I want out, too.”
“Come on. There’s not a second to spare.”
We leave, my head filled with bile and bad premonitions. Gibson must sense my ill humor and tries to cheer me up the only way she knows how.
“We can get really stoned,” she sings once we’re outside.
“I’m not in a very festive mood, I’m afraid.”
“Why not? What’s bugging you? You can tell me.”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Is it Paula? You didn’t like her?”
“I liked her, she seems incredible.”
“So what is it then?”
My car is par
ked at the bottom of Main Street, in a pay lot staffed by a hooligan who looked like he just got out of prison. For all I know, my Honda is at a chop shop in Mechanicsville. My mind will give me no rest tonight. “I told you, it’s kind of difficult to put into words.”
“Your mom thinks you’re in some kind of trouble.”
“What?”
“That’s what she was saying on the drive over to the restaurant. She’s really worried about you. She thinks you’ve really changed.”
“Everyone changes. It’s inevitable.”
“She thinks your wife is messing with you.”
“Ex-wife. And she isn’t.”
“I think you should get really, really stoned with me. That’s what I think.”
“Well, when you’re eighteen, that fixes every problem.”
“Duh. Because it does.”
“Said the person who just got out of rehab.”
“It was court-ordered.”
“Meaning what? It didn’t count?”
“It was total horse shit! Oh my God, those people in rehab made me want to get high every day I was there.”
The capital city is raucous tonight, even as the stifling heat saps every last drop of moisture from our bodies. Night doesn’t bring relief but a darker complexion of aridity. I couldn’t cry if I wanted to. My mouth is already parched from the short downhill stroll to the parking lot beneath the interstate overpass. Drunken revelers shout at Gibson, and she shoots the finger at one obnoxious kid cruising by in an old Mazda. Brake lights flash on and the car abruptly stops. The kid leaning out of the window jumps out and with arms extended glares menacingly and advances toward us.
“Why you got to be so mean, baby?” he says. He’s thin and wiry, not tall, a shirtless rack of ribs. It looks like a gun is sticking out of the front of his drooping shorts. Horns blare as the traffic grinds to a halt.