“This one says it’s the most talked-about chapel in Tennessee,” I said, holding up a brochure.
“Uh-oh. That could mean anything. That could mean there was a murder there or something.”
“Oh, that’s a good point. Well, how about this one? There’s a waterfall, and you get an angel keepsake magnet with every purchase of $229 or more. And they’ve got Friday specials.”
“Right here,” Jerry said suddenly. His flat palm turned rapidly on the wheel as he steered into a parking lot. Next to the road was a giant backlit pink heart printed with white lace, like a box of Valentine candy. In swooping powder-blue cursive it said, “Forever ‘n’ Ever Wedding Chapel.”
“You want to get married here?”
“Yeah. Did you see the sign?” He gestured out the window. The marquee under the pink heart said “CHRISTAIN MARRIAGE SERVICE.”
“But they’re all Christian marriage services. We’re in the middle of the Bible Belt. I have yet to see a single shotgun wedding synagogue.”
“First of all, it’s not a shotgun wedding. You’re not pregnant, at least, not that I know of. Secondly, did you really read the sign? They didn’t even spell it right. It’s perfect. It’s exactly what one of these places should be.”
A bell tinkled on the front door as we came in. A secretary in a white suit with long bottle-blond hair and lavender acrylic nails looked up at us and set down her Reader’s Digest.
“We want to get married,” said Jerry.
She looked down at her desk blotter. “We don’t have any openings until eleven.”
Jerry looked at his watch. It was ten-fifteen. “We can wait,” he said.
We sprang for the $379 Romance Special that included a lace-edged silk bouquet, a red rose boutonniere for the lapel of the suit Jerry had brought for Madison’s wedding, a videotape of the ceremony, and eighteen professional photos. We tossed in a couple hundred bucks more for rings they sold for an outrageous markup and a rented wedding gown and veil. The chapel was like a life-sized Barbie playset, with silk roses and stained glass everywhere and the ubiquitous carved unity candle promised by every brochure we’d left in the car. It was heavy-handed, full-throttle romance. Low country music from the secretary’s radio drifted into the dressing room as she helped me get dressed in a frilly white gown I’d chosen from the closetful they had on hand.
“Your man’s going to think you’re the prettiest thing he’s ever laid eyes on,” she said, fluffing out my veil.
“I hope so.”
“Don’t you worry, honey.” She handed me the bouquet and then fidgeted with it, straightening the wires on a few of the flowers. “He’s been in the chapel ten minutes and hasn’t even so much as looked at the emergency exit. You don’t see that every day.”
The secretary got stuck on the phone with the florist, so the minister pulled in the guy who was repairing the copy machine to be a witness. He stood respectfully beside a candelabra with his hands folded in front of him, his stiff baseball cap with the strip of braided trim across the brim crumpled against his thigh. It all felt like make-believe until I slid the ring onto Jerry’s trembling finger and, looking up into his eyes, saw the unflinching depth of the emotion that had brought him to stand in that place. We could have been in a minister’s office or Saint Paul’s Cathedral, and it would have made no difference to him either way. He just wanted to marry me.
“You may kiss the bride,” drawled the minister.
Jerry put his hands against the lacy upper arms of my rented gown and gave me a kiss that made the minister clear his throat and the copier repairman look away and scratch the back of his head. And as Jerry took the plastic salad-bar box containing the heart-shaped white cake that the secretary handed him, I picked up the blue Paper Mate pen and signed Phoebe Kassner for the last time.
We spent most of our twenty-three-hour honeymoon at the Whispering Pines Chalet & Suites, which boasted free HBO and ESPN, heart-shaped whirlpool tubs, and the best pecan pie in the state of Tennessee. Jerry almost cried with happiness when he saw the Jacuzzi in our honeymoon suite. He took pictures like crazy—pictures of me, pictures of the view from the balcony, pictures of us together that took several attempts with the digital camera to get right. He took pictures of the pecan pie and the Jacuzzi tub. He loaded them all onto his laptop computer and e-mailed them off to his parents and sister in an obnoxiously huge file with the subject line, “My Weekend.”
“Boy, are they going to be surprised,” I said.
He flipped his laptop closed. “Wait ‘til I tell my students. By the way, are you going to be Mrs. Sullivan now?”
“Oh, jeez. I hadn’t even thought about that. I guess so.”
“Lots of things to think about.” He grinned and zipped up his suitcase. “Come on, let’s go turn these keys in. We’ve got somebody else’s wedding we need to get to.”
Once we arrived in Fowler’s Creek, we could have just put the car in neutral, like at a car wash, and been carried along to the wedding on a tide of obsessive preparation. On the historic main street, painters were heaving buckets of forest green and sunset mauve up the ladders to their partners in white overalls. A street-sweeping machine whirred beside the curb, and in the little park area bordered by a wrought-iron fence, a greasy-looking teenager was spearing trash and dropping it into a Hefty bag.
There were small green signs that said Cottonwood Farms all along the roadways, with arrows pointing us in the right direction, but it was the satellite towers that we followed, rising up from the studio trailers and twisted with cable like the snake-and-staff insignias on medical-school diplomas. The sea of trailers extended out from the plantation for a quarter mile. A guy wearing a hooded sweatshirt under his orange plastic vest leaned down to our car window and pointed down the dirt road.
“Guest parking’s over by the slave quarters,” he said.
“Is that supposed to be symbolic?” asked Jerry.
“‘Scuse me?”
“Never mind.” He rolled up the window, gravel crunching under the Jetta’s tires.
They herded us into the solarium at the back of the house, where my mother and her husband were standing beside an artificial ficus trimmed in small white Christmas lights.
“Where were you yesterday?” she demanded.
“In Tennessee. Sorry. We stopped off to get married.”
“You what?”
“Mother of the bride,” called a guy in a reedy, lispy-sound-ing voice. “Mother of the—oh, there you are. Geraldine will take you to trailer six for hair and makeup.”
“Can my daughter come with me?”
He flipped up a paper on his clipboard. “Name?”
“Phoebe Kassner,” said my mother.
“Actually, it’s Phoebe Sullivan now,” I corrected.
My mother dropped her face into her hands. “Oh, God. What did you do? Why can’t you girls just get married like normal people?”
“Nope, Phoebe Kassner is trailer nine. Follow Kenisha. She’s taking the trailer nine people right now.”
My mother gave him an impatient look. “Couldn’t you just switch her to trailer six?”
“Honey, that’s a liiiittle more complicated than just a quick switcheroo. Are you her husband?” he asked Jerry.
“Yeah,” he confirmed.
“Oh, God.” There went my mother again.
“Okay. Follow me.” He waved a hand in the air. “Let’s move, people.”
I didn’t see Jerry again until they filed us all into the ballroom for the ceremony. He was standing on the other side of a red braided rope arguing with a guy in a tux who looked like he’d been recruited from Parris Island. “I am family,” he was saying.
“You’re not on the list.”
“I’m married to her sister. You can’t stick me in the back with the extras.”
“I sure can, when you’re not on the list.”
“Listen, you’re getting yourself on my goddamn list, and if you don’t—”
I br
oke out of the line and ran over to the bouncer in the tux. “He’s my husband,” I said, the words sounding funny in my mouth.
“Who are you?”
“Phoebe, uh, Kassner.” I held up my wrist with the green paper bracelet on it that showed I was family.
The guy looked down at his clipboard. “If he’s your husband, how come he’s not on the list?”
“Well, we just got married yesterday.”
“Oh, yeah?” The guy smiled menacingly. “Well, maybe you should have gotten married two weeks ago, sweetheart, before the list was finalized.”
“Don’t call her sweetheart,” Jerry said threateningly.
“Listen, you two. I’m on strict instructions not to let anyone without a green bracelet past this line. I don’t care whether you’re her brother, her baby’s daddy, or her friggin’ identical twin. If you don’t got a green bracelet, you’re sitting back there.” He pointed to the back of the room with his walkie-talkie.
“Can’t you just call somebody on that thing?” I asked him.
“No, damn it. The family seating’s booked. We’re taping in five minutes, and we’re not moving people around now. You want to sit with your hubby, step right this way and you can sit in the back with him. I’ll fill your seat with someone else’s ass.”
Jerry and I looked at each other across the rope. “She’s your sister,” he said. “Go ahead. I’ll meet up with you after.”
“No. No, no, no.” I looked at my parents and stepparents, all of the cousins and aunts and uncles and my grandma. “No, I want to be with you.”
“Make up your mind, sweetheart,” said the tux guy.
Jerry gritted his teeth the same way he had right before he’d grabbed C. J. Anastasio by the neck and shoved him against the wall. “Damn it, you say that one more time and I’m going to—”
I lifted up the rope and ducked underneath it. “Where are we sitting?” I asked Jerry.
And so I watched my sister’s wedding from the fourth row from the end, feeling the blast of cool air when the bells of the horse-drawn carriage jingled and she came through the ballroom doors, her cheeks glowing with happiness and bronzing powder, on my father’s arm. Orchids trailed from her bouquet; she wore a diamond tiara, lent, I had overheard in the dressing room, by Harry Winston Jewelers for the occasion. Five of my cousins carried her train.
Alexa, looking comically uncomfortable with her black hair piled on top of her head and a long strand of bangs smoothly running down her forehead and tucked behind her ear, stood nervously to the left of the altar, holding a small bouquet. Her ankles trembled in her strappy high heels. She looked like a Skipper doll someone had dressed up as some kind of Unforgettable Evening Barbie. Rhett, once again, looked as debonair and sophisticated as he had when he was on the show. He stood at the end of the red carpet with his hands folded in front of him, impeccable and gorgeous in his tuxedo. I thought about all the women who would watch this show and envy Madison, not having any idea that the guy drove the pickup version of a lowrider and had Copenhagen Smokeless Tobacco rings on the back pockets of his jeans.
At the end of the red carpet, my father passed Madison over to Rhett, who smiled his Elvis half smile and offered his Armani-suited arm. The string quartet fell silent.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to celebrate the marriage of Grace Kassner and Colby McGeever…”
Jerry leaned toward me and hummed the theme from Deliverance. I smacked him.
“Both Grace and Colby have chosen to write original vows as tokens of their love for one another. Colby, if you would please turn to your bride at this time and offer her your words of devotion.”
“Grace,” he said in his deep, drawling voice, folding his hand over hers, “my love for you is as endless as time, as broad as the ocean, and when I look into your eyes that shine like stars in the light—”
“I need a cigarette,” said Jerry.
“You don’t smoke anymore,” I whispered.
“No, but I’m willing to start again if it’ll get me out of here.”
“I vow to love and cherish you for as long as our love shall grow and flourish, like the vines along the grape arbor where we first kissed—”
“Did you hear that?” Jerry hissed in an urgent whisper. “That meant absolutely nothing. Those vines die in the winter. These metaphors are killing me.”
“Will you please stop heckling my sister’s wedding?” I whispered back.
“But he’s not even vowing anything. He’s just reciting bad poetry.”
One of the ushers shined a flashlight on Jerry. He squinted at the light and sat back up straight.
Now it was Madison’s turn. She smiled at him, her teeth gleaming wetly, like they were covered in a shiny layer of spit. “Colby, ever since the day I met you, I knew that you were the knight in shining armor who would carry me away to be your princess—”
“That would be lady, actually,” corrected Jerry.
“I promise to show my love for you in every way, to cherish our bond, and to forever be faithful to the love we have for each other this day—”
“I’m telling you, it’s going to drive me to drink,” he whispered.
The adorable little ring bearer, a combed little boy I recognized from a Cheerios commercial, offered the rings to the minister on a frilly silk pillow. From where we were sitting, I really couldn’t see at all when Rhett slipped the ring onto Madison’s finger. I did notice Pete and Dominic sitting together in the second row, Pete with a placidly happy expression on his face and Dominic grinning manically.
“May your union be blessed with eternal love and devotion on this day and forever,” said the minister. “May your journey through life together be filled with joy and prosperity.”
“They’ve already got that,” I whispered to Jerry. “They each got half a million bucks for actually getting married.”
“Isn’t that guy a minister?” asked Jerry. “Shouldn’t he be mentioning Jesus somewhere in there? Maybe a Bible quote or something?”
“Shhhh. Not on national TV. They’d alienate a lot of viewers.”
There was a long pause during which Madison and Rhett smiled at each other beatifically and the minister looked at them with a kindly expression. The little ring bearer stood perfectly still. Alexa rubbed her red-painted lips together and shifted her weight from one ankle to the other.
“What are they waiting for?” I asked Jerry under my breath.
Suddenly, a guy in Wrangler jeans that bagged in the seat and a “Veronica’s Closet” T-shirt with a microphone headset appeared from the wings. “Okay, you go over there,” he said to one of the cameramen. “You. Hey, Fred. Your mark’s over here. Bob, let’s get another take on those rings. Just take it from the part where he slips it on her finger.”
“Am I okay?” asked Madison.
“Yeah, you’re fine, honey. Just give your ring back to Colby real quick.”
The people around us shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Finally they moved the cameramen back around to the right places and the guy with the headset yelled, “All right, quiet on the set. I mean, wedding.”
“You may kiss the bride,” said the minister.
Madison and Rhett kissed passionately, and the crowd erupted in a hoot of excited approval.
“No, no, no.” The headset guy came back out onto the red carpet. “All right, let’s do another take. We need romance here. You can’t all be screaming like a bunch of girls at a sleepover party.”
Madison grimaced. I knew she was having flashbacks to Singing Sensation. A woman with a clear fishing tackle box rushed over to stand between Rhett and Madison and started touching up her lipstick with a small brush.
“Was the kiss okay?” asked Madison.
“Yeah, the kiss was fine. Just do that same kiss for me again. Okay, people, let’s try this again. No yelling this time. We’re on in five, four…”
“You may kiss the bride,” the minister said again.
On
ce again, Madison and Rhett kissed passionately, and this time we all sat still and looked at the decorations on the ceiling.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the minister, “I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Colby McGeever.”
Rhett and Madison turned to the crowd and smiled. We all clapped politely, afraid to make too much noise.
“Perfect,” said the headset guy. “Okay, now, Bob, I need you over here…”
The producers had set up a small city of enormous heated tents in the garden and filled them with everything required by a gaudy, over-the-top wedding reception: gigantic top-heavy floral arrangements, a champagne fountain lit from beneath with floodlights, centerpieces in the shape of kissing doves made of spun sugar. Jerry and I admired the life-sized ice sculpture of Rhett and Madison in their wedding clothes, melting slowly into a drippy puddle, that sat beside the five-tier wedding cake.
“God, that’s the most painfully symbolic thing I’ve seen in my entire life,” said Jerry.
I shook my head. “No, that would be the fact that someone accidentally stored it in the same room with the hundred white doves they were planning to release, and the carbon-dioxide fumes from the dry ice killed every last one of them.”
“Oh, jeez.”
“Yeah, I just heard one of the coordinators screaming at some poor woman in Spanish.”
Jerry looked around. “Are Ashley and Marci here?”
“No, they broke up. Oh, look, here come Rhett and Madison.”
Jerry and I hugged the edge of the crowd and clapped as Madison emerged from a shimmering, tulle-draped entryway, wearing a shorter wedding dress with a different neckline, holding Rhett’s arm and waving. Pete and Dominic sidled up to me and nodded hello to Jerry; they had been docked in Orlando for two days and had driven up for the occasion. Dominic looked very spiffy in a baggy Italian suit; Pete, in his conservative gray suit, looked more like a minister than the guy who had married Rhett and Madison.
“Beautiful, wasn’t it?” Pete asked sincerely, in his minister sort of way. I gave him a knowing look and he gave a sheepish shrug. “Well, I’m happy for her, anyway.”
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