Wedding Season

by Darcy Cosper

  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?”

  IN 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.

  “YOUR 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?”

  AS 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 ignor
es 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.

  Saturday, July 28, 200—

  “NO 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.

  “This is okay.” Gabe leans back beside me and puts on his sunglasses. “Clambake wedding. Henry said they’re cooking lobster and corn for dinner. Digging a big fire pit on the beach. Not bad.”

  “Also, according to rumor, this is going to be the weirdest extended family reunion ever,” Henry says, handing me a beach bag. “Melody’s mother has been married five times. Dad six times. Kids and step-kids from pretty much every marriage, so there’s all these half- and stepbrothers and sisters, then stepparents remarrying and popping out more kids and step-kids and half-siblings. And most of them are involved in theater and the art world, so of course everybody knows everybody else and they all work together. I think Melody’s father’s second wife actually married her mother’s third husband.”

  “Erica said Mel’s maid of honor is her second stepfather’s daughter from his third marriage or something like that,” Delia says. “The kids all stay in touch.”

  “Here. I’ll carry the chairs.” Gabe pushes his hair out of his eyes and takes several folding beach chairs from Delia. “What about the groom?”

  “Freaks.” Henry throws an arm over Delia’s shoulders. “One sister, younger. Parents were college sweethearts. Still happily married.”

  “Clearly, they’re aliens.” Delia gives her a sideways glare.

  “Minnesota,” Henry says. “Same thing.”

  We shoulder our burdens and stroll along a narrow road lined with cars. A couple of groups of people pass us, hauling their own bundles of beach paraphernalia. The last house on the left, the base of wedding operations, is a gray-shingled, ramshackle mess belonging to one of Melody’s former stepparents. It keels lazily at the center of a broad, lightly browned lawn. Here, amid overgrown flower beds and untended hedges, are an array of mismatched chairs and café tables set with vases of daisies, and shaded by orange parasols. The house and its haphazard surroundings have been lavished with orange, yellow, and white crepe paper and festooned with bunches of matching balloons.

  “Those must be the bridesmaids,” Gabe nods. On the house’s dangerously wobbly looking front porch, which is tangled in flowering vines, a cluster of young women in bright yellow, 1940s-style bathing suits are talking and laughing. Erica, looking like a blonde Esther Williams with a giant orange daisy behind one ear, emerges from the bunch and waves frantically.

  “Don’t forget your sunscreen,” she yells to us. We wave back and follow another group of guests along a weathered plank walk and over a rise to the slender crescent of sand that slopes gently toward the bay. Along the little beach are perhaps two hundred wedding guests, setting up beach chairs and sun umbrellas, shaking out striped towels, unpacking bottles of soda from little coolers. Winding through the crowd is a path lined with large pearly conch shells and bouquets of wildflowers leading to a makeshift gazebo set at the water’s very edge. The gazebo’s white canopy and silky ribbons flutter on the wind. Beyond, out in the bay, several sailboats rock on the shining blue water.

  “Well, shit,” Henry says. “This is picturesque.” She smiles approvingly at a pair of handsome, tanned, and sun-bleached young men in orange swim trunks standing on either side of what I take to be the aisle. “Hi there, boys.”

  “Hey,” one of them says. “Bride’s side or groom’s side?”

  “Bride,” Henry says. “Are you serious?”

  “To your left, please.” The usher smiles politely. “You’ll see there’s a place just down there, near the water.” He reaches into the lumpy net sack on the ground beside him, pulls out four yellow plastic ducks, and hands them around to us. “Someone will explain how to use these at the end of the ceremony.”

  “This millennium is getting so complicated,” Gabe says, as we pick our way through the crowd to the space our usher indicated. “Since when do rubber duckies require operating instructions?”

  “This is our spot, kid,” Henry tells a very small boy standing nearby, and brandishes her duck at him. “You want to make a sandcastle here, you’ll need to purchase a building permit.”

  “Bride’s side or groom’s side?” Gabe asks the little boy, who sticks his tongue out at us and runs away.

  As we stake our claim and begin to set up, I see Henry’s eyes narrow.

  “Bitch alert,” she hisses, looking across the aisle. “Lock and load.”

  I follow her gaze to a delicate figure in a nearly nonexistent bikini top and sheer flowing sarong who winds her way through the crowd, her golden, Pre-Raphaelite curls shining in the sun.

  “What the fuck is she doing here?” Henry whispers to me, as Ora raises her hand in greeting and comes toward us.

  “It’s a plot,” I whisper back. “Obviously. Hello, Ora.”

  “Fancy meeting you here.” Henry glowers down at her, teeth bared.

  “And you,” Ora says, all graciousness. “What a pleasant surprise. I’m here with an old friend of the groom’s. Gabriel! Hello, darling.” She lights up as he moves to kiss her cheek; she offers the second cheek, Eurotrash-style, and, caught off guard, he stumbles before leaning in again, and nearly kisses her mouth. They both laugh, and she puts a hand on his chest. I could swear he’s blushing. My stomach lurches.

  “Hey.” Delia puts her hand out, and Ora takes it.

  “Ora Mitelman. You’re the lead singer of Mercy Fuck, aren’t you?”

  “Yup. Delia Banks. Nice to meet you.”

  “I saw you open for the Apocryphal Angels last year,” Ora gushes. “You girls are amazing.”

  “Thanks, thanks. That’s nice of you.”

  “Do you suppose I could convince you to
perform at a private party in a couple of weeks?” Ora still hasn’t released Delia’s hand. Henry scowls at them, turns away, and flops down in a beach chair.

  “It’s possible.” Delia smiles. “Let me talk with the band and see what their schedules look like.”

  “Cost is no object, of course,” Ora says, letting Delia’s fingers slide slowly through hers. “I must have you.”

  “Dee,” Henry says. “Could you please come put some sunscreen on my back?”

  “In just a minute, hon,” Delia says, not looking away from Ora. “I’m in the book, Ora. Give me a call next week, and I’ll let you know.”

  “Oh, I will. And I’ll be seeing you there, of course.” She beams at Gabriel.

  “Seeing her where?” I grab Gabe’s arm.

  “Joy.” Ora stares at my hand. “Is that an engagement ring? Gabe, you didn’t tell me you two were engaged!” She has gone gratifyingly pale under her tan. My momentary sensation of triumph is quashed, however, by an unpleasant thought: When would Gabe have had an opportunity to tell Ora about our engagement? And if he had such an opportunity, why would he not have told her? And who installed this Cosmo Girl monologue in my brain?

  “He surprised me a few weeks ago,” I tell Ora, linking my arm through Gabe’s. “Though apparently he’d been planning it for some time. He proposed at my thirtieth birthday party. Isn’t that romantic?”

  Gabe gives me a quizzical look. I don’t blame him. I’m acutely conscious of sounding like a complete idiot, but my mouth seems to have developed a mind of its own.

  “Well.” Ora tosses her hair over her shoulder and smiles coolly. “Congratulations. He certainly is a catch, Joy. You’re a lucky girl.”

  “Funny,” I say. “That’s just what he said. That I was a catch, I mean. That he was lucky.”

  “Well. Best wishes to both of you. I should be going, I suppose. My date will be wondering if someone has carried me off! But I’ll be seeing you all soon, I’m sure.” She turns and sashays off, pausing to flirt with the half-naked ushers. Delia watches her go until Henry throws a bottle of sunscreen, which hits Delia on the back of one leg.