“You should have let me get a proper hairdresser in here, dearie,” she said. “It’s far too late now. Jesus.” And she withdrew to her bedroom.
On the small table near her shantung chaise, there was a silver tray and small cut-crystal glasses. My aunt Jeanne sat on the chaise, an emerald green bottle of brandy in her hand. Only a few remnants of the label of the bottle remained, browned with age, the words faded to illegibility. This brandy had belonged to their father, Simon Pierre Robineau. My aunt Jeanne had carried it on the plane from Miami in her lap. It was all they had left of their father, the Frenchman who raised them under the leafy canopy of banyan trees in Coconut Grove: a bottle of old brandy. In Robineau family tradition, the brandy was poured out for a toast whenever a girl in the family wed. It was a ritual to be done just before the wedding ceremony, in private. Only Robineau women, the groom, and his female relatives were allowed to take part.
We gathered in her pink room—me, my sisters, Dean’s sister Jessica, my mother, and my aunt Jeanne. Nonnie and Helen were ushered in from the guest house. They formed a small semicircle around me. I was seated on the chaise. “Dean must not see the dress,” my mother said. She draped a sheet over my shoulders.
“Wait, are you sure this is the way the tradition is supposed to go?” my sister Catherine asked. “It seems to me the rule is that the bride and groom should not see each other before the wedding. It has nothing to do with not seeing each other’s wedding clothes.”
“Catherine, dearie,” my mother said, “for pity’s sake, of course it is supposed to go like this. It’s family tradition. The groom does not see the dress. Don’t try to stir things up. We know, because we are la famille Robineau and we made the tradition up. Right, Sissy?”
“Right-o,” said my aunt Jeanne, who always agreed with everything my mother had to say.
Dean came in. He was in a black morning coat, with gray pinstripe pants. He looked shy in the room of women. He looked at me wrapped in a sheet and winked. He knew to say nothing that would set my mother on edge.
“Look at you,” said his grandmother Nonnie as he walked up beside her. She clicked her tongue. “My, but don’t you look like the prince of England.” She blinked at him through her thick glasses.
The brandy was poured around. It glowed in the cut crystal, the warm color of caramel. We drank a toast to Colonel Robineau, may he rest in peace.
“Wow,” said my sister Darcy. “This shit tastes like a linen closet.”
I sat on the chaise, the ungainly bedsheet drooping over my delicate lace dress. “What the hell does a linen closet taste like?” I asked my sister.
“You know. Old. Musty.” She took another sip and added, “Gross.”
“It happens to be very fine brandy,” my mother said. “It’s Napoleon brandy from 1872. It does not taste like a linen closet.”
“Well,” said my aunt, “that does happen to be where I store it.”
“Oh god, Sissy, not anymore. Jesus,” my mother said. “One of you two girls”—she looked at my sisters—“you’re up next. In fact, I think we should just keep the brandy here in my cabinet while we wait for the next round. One of them is bound to find a nice boy soon. Pray to god.”
Downstairs the string quartet began tuning up in the garden. Soon there was the mumble and chat of guests being seated in rows of white wooden folding chairs that gave out to the sea. The waves were breaking in a calm, easy rhythm, the lulling cadence we fell asleep to as children.
The string quartet was made up of Juilliard students who had come out from New York for the day. Earlier they had stowed their black instrument cases and their duffle bags of formal clothes in a room down the hall at the other side of the house, the “servants’ wing,” as it was called, and taken towels to swim. I watched them as they ran into the sea, all knees and elbows, their bodies gangly and pale, untouched by the summer sun.
Soon after, the bagpiper arrived and joined them on the beach. He was a heavyset man with a graying rust-colored mustache. He wore a T-shirt tight over his midsection, ample tufts of chest hair curling out at the top.
Ruth Ann Middleton bustled into my mother’s bedroom in a bright orange muumuu and white kid gloves, a white pocketbook dangling from her forearm, a pad of paper in her hand, the top pages flung over and bobbing as she patrolled the proceedings. She repeated her credo that weddings always start on time, and looked people up and down as she shuffled in and out, herding “the nonessentials,” as she called those not in the wedding party, out of the bedroom and downstairs.
Dean, in Ruth Ann’s opinion, was a nonessential, and she glowered at him while he lingered in the pink room. I took his hand once and squeezed it before he left. He looked at me, his eyes looking right into mine. “See you downstairs,” he whispered in my ear, his lips brushing the veil.
Helen moved her mother along, holding her arm gently as they eased out of the pink room. “C’mon, Mother,” she said, gently pushing her mother from behind. Nonnie was dressed in a canary yellow dress and a white sweater she had crocheted years ago for special occasions such as weddings. Her mouth turned up slightly at the edges in a half smile. It gave her a spritely, mischievous air. She moved tentatively at her daughter’s prods.
“Don’t you think you should change?” Ruth Ann asked my cousin Pierre, who had showed up in an orange-and-white-striped jacket and no tie. “Because there’s not much time, and weddings start on time. You should get on your wedding clothes,” she said. “Whoever you are.”
“I am dressed,” he said. “I’m a cousin.”
“He’s mine,” Aunt Jeanne said. “My eldest boy.” Aunt Jeanne and Uncle Jooge had five children. Pierre was my favorite, my dearest relative, more like a brother than a cousin. It was he who showed up for all the “brother” things, like birthdays and graduations. He had recently moved to San Francisco, where he was slowly and somewhat noisily emerging from the closet.
“There are no exceptions to this,” Ruth Ann warned. “Weddings begin as planned.” At the window, my sisters stood in bare feet, in their matching pink bridesmaid dresses, watching people being seated below.
“There’s Lou Anne,” Catherine said.
“Where?” asked our mother. “Is that girl wearing one of her hats I hope not?”
My mother’s friend Lou Anne Wall had a green Astroturf lawn in her living room and a yellow piano, and tended to wear loud hats with feathers and tiny papier-mâché animals in the brim.
“She’s wearing one that looks like a satellite dish,” Catherine answered.
“Oh god, let me get a look,” our mother said, and pushed the curtain aside. “Jesus Christ, that girl always has to steal the show. And look, there’s your aunt Sally, girls, in a mink coat. What is she trying to prove, a mink in August. That is so tacky. So vintage Sally, really, if you want to hear what I really think. That girl is the limit.”
Aunt Sally, my father’s younger sister, was one of my mother’s nemeses. She had her bleached-blonde hair in a bouffant coif. Despite the fierce look always on her face, she in fact resembled my father. Their features were similar. “Daddy in pearls,” we called her. Every year she and my mother bought each other an ounce of caviar from the 21 Club for Christmas, and waited to see who could hold out the longest before writing a thank-you note.
“There’s a British word for those wedding hats. Astonishers or something,” my sister Darcy said.
“They are called fascinators,” chimed in Ruth Ann Middleton, “and really, no one should be wearing a hat to a wedding at this hour. It’s an evening wedding. And it will be a night wedding if people don’t listen.”
Ruth Ann appeared to be getting agitated.
“Pat!” she said to my mother. “So much planning goes into these things. Please, we’re in the final stretch now.”
I wondered if Ruth Ann was even aware of where my father was. I assumed she had to be in on it, as it involved a major change in the roster of the wedding party. I wondered if that was adding to her being
flustered, or if she was always frantic at the beginning of one of her weddings. If, like an actor who ran his lines backstage before he went on, or a singer who runs through the scales, or an athlete who stretches on the sidelines of the playing field before the big game, Ruth Ann was doing a warm-up routine on my mother’s pink rug.
“Okay, kids,” my mother said to us. “Please listen to Ruth Ann. She’s worked very hard on this, we owe it to her.” Ruth Ann stood beside my mother with her lists and her pocketbook. “It’s her show.”
It was Ruth Ann’s show. We owed it to her.
“Wait, excuse me, it’s Ruth Ann’s what?” said my sister Darcy. Darcy could always be counted on to speak her mind.
“Quiet,” my mother said.
Darcy looked at me. “You know?” she said. She was still in her bare feet, her satin bridesmaid shoes lying on their sides under the chaise longue. “What the fuck does that mean, Ruth Ann’s show? It’s your wedding, for chrissake.”
“Jesus,” my mother said. “Enough.” She turned to Ruth Ann. “I’m sorry,” she said. “These kids are a little unnerved.”
“Oh,” Ruth Ann said, “Pat, dear, please don’t worry. It’s quite normal for there to be nerves at a wedding.” She gave a merry laugh, as if everything were proceeding perfectly, just as planned, just a few jitters, everything was normal for a wedding.
A little after 4:30 Ruth Ann ushered my sisters from my mother’s bedroom. Weddings always start on time or her name wasn’t Ruth Ann Middleton, Ruth Ann emphasized one more time to the room, to my sisters and our mother and me. Ruth Ann used her girth as a guard against debate as she led them out of the room, her notepad still clutched in her gloved hand.
Somewhere down below, Dean was standing strong against the summer sky in a gray morning suit. Only my mother and I remained upstairs in her bedroom.
I had sand in my hair. In her bathroom mirror, I fussed with it.
Over the years, we had glued our found seashells around the frame of the mirror above the sink in my mother’s bathroom, and I studied them as I brushed. Luminescent shards of slipper shells pink like baby fingernails, rosy whelks, dusty white clamshells, gray scallop shells that spread like fans. The offerings of childhood.
In the bedroom, my mother dialed her pink princess phone. I could hear the click of the clear Lucite dial, yellowed with age.
The quartet started in on the opening piece on the list. Soft and stately, the light melody lilting a graceful sorrow over the rows of guests assembling on white folding chairs on the grass.
“This is Mrs. McCulloch,” I heard my mother say into her princess phone. “I’m trying to reach Dr. Albert in the ICU.” After a moment she spoke again. “So kindly get him. Now,” she said. My mother spoke in the clipped British accent she used to sound imperious.
Evidently, we were going to get through this with grace and style, even if it meant pulling out the clipped British accent.
“I wish to speak to him urgently,” she said. “It’s of utmost importance he get this.”
She waited. The violin and the cello and the sea were the only sounds as I brushed my hair, there was the occasional whisper and cough from the guests below. They’re here, I thought as I brushed. Zoom.
“What? No, he can’t call me back. I will not be available in an hour. Find him. Jesus Christ! I need to speak to him now. No, I’ll not leave a message.
“Dearie,” she called in to me. “Leave that hair alone. I put that veil in place very carefully. It’s too late now to fix the hair. It’s a lost cause and you’re just making it worse. Next time, listen to me in the first place. I am trying to cover a lot of bases here and your hair is no longer up on my priority list.”
When the attending physician came on the phone, my mother asked him, “Are you on call all night?”
He must have reassured her that he’d call if there was any change in my father’s condition because she said, “No, that’s just the point.” She listened a bit more and then said, “Doctor, that is not the point of my call. Why don’t you stop talking and listen to me? If anything happens to my husband this evening, do not call this house. Do not. Do you hear me? We cannot be disturbed.”
The quartet finished their song and launched into another. She was quiet on the phone for a while and then she repeated, “It’s immaterial and I’m sorry, Doctor. We cannot be disturbed, though. We are having a party.” And she hung up the phone.
“What’s immaterial?” I yelled from the bathroom. “What are you sorry about?”
“Never mind that,” she said. “Keep your mind on what’s happening right now. And what’s happening is your brother is supposed to be here right now. Damn it.”
Soon there was a knock on her bedroom door. My half brother Keith. As if to explain his appearance he said to my mother, “That woman down there—”
“Ruth Ann,” my mother corrected. “She’s not ‘that woman.’”
“Ruth Ann then. Whoever she is, she says weddings start on time.”
“She is a professional,” my mother said. “I hope to dear god you were polite.”
Keith laughed. He had a light, high laugh, the laugh of our father. The laughter we used to hear as children, falling asleep to the sounds of tinkling glasses and plates in the dining room below as we lay together in quilts. Keith inherited both our father’s laugh and our father’s pale blue eyes. “She’s pacing in the living room yelling at everyone,” he said. “She practically lifted me by the lapels and carried me up here.”
“Because she’s a professional and she’s trying her best with what we’ve given her, poor thing. All right, now that you’re here, I’m going down. Go get your sister out of the bathroom. It’s her wedding, for pity’s sake. Everyone’s knocked themselves out. It would be nice if she managed to show up.”
She went down the stairs in her “no-color blue” dress to be seated in the front row beside the housekeeper, the gardener, and the rest of her kitchen staff. It was part of my mother’s vision, her Lady Bountiful message, long thought out, I imagine, and acted on for all her friends to see, that she would array her domestic staff up front by her side. The rest of the family sat a row behind.
Keith came to the door of the bathroom. My hair was just not going to get in line with the program. Beach hair, springing back against the brush with a mind of its own. The light veil hovered on my head like a tea napkin. My brother Keith was trim in his morning suit; his short brown beard was cut close to his face and flecked with blond.
The quartet was playing the song I had chosen for my sisters to walk up the aisle to. I could see them in my mind’s eye, stepping up to the rose-entwined gazebo, the pink ribbons flapping in the slight wind off the sea.
At the door to the bathroom, my brother Keith watched me watch myself in the mirror.
“Crazy hair,” I said to Keith. I tossed the brush in the sink. My mother’s bathroom sink was also pink. “Hopeless.”
Below, the music then stopped. Nat, the minister, cleared his throat; then he spoke to the crowd. “On behalf of the family, I’d like to welcome you here this afternoon. John McCulloch is our captain, the paterfamilias of the McCulloch family. He cannot be here with us today,” he said, “yet it is his wish, and the wish of his family, that we join together to celebrate this very special occasion.”
In the crowd, there were murmurs.
“We better get going,” Keith said to me quietly.
The music started up again. The quartet played the opening of Bach’s Double Violin Concerto in D Minor. It was our cue.
I had chosen the second movement of Bach’s Double Violin Concerto to march in to because it was slow. I hadn’t wanted my father to stumble walking down the aisle. I had assumed he’d be drunk by this time of day, 5 p.m., and I would have to marshal all my strength to hold him steady as we walked, everyone’s eyes on us. I had imagined this months before when I had thought of this moment. Maybe years, in fact.
They say it’s a moment a little girl imagines all the
years she is growing up. A moment a woman remembers forever.
Keith eyed me; both of us had the glazed looks of zombies. “Are you ready, kiddo?” he asked at the door of the bathroom. He held out his arm.
We walked down the long hall past my father’s empty room, down the stairs and out the side door while the quartet riffed on Bach’s concerto, waiting for us. They struck up the second movement as soon as we came into sight at the door of the patio. The sun was doing what it was supposed to, casting a golden light across the lawn.
And because weddings start on time, this one did.
IX
The Day After
The sun shot a bright streak across the antique wallpaper. We were in an unfamiliar bedroom in the American Hotel in Sag Harbor, a fifteen-minute drive from the house. An unopened bottle of Champagne, compliments of the management, sat in a bath of melted ice in a silver bucket. Beside it, two flutes. We had come in late, driving in my old maroon Saab, and now dried shaving cream crusted on the rearview window in the gravel parking lot below. People had thrown rose petals, a Ruth Ann Middleton touch, and they stuck on the windshield in splotches. On a brocade armchair in the far corner of the room, my wedding dress lazed, sandy at the hem and delicately collapsed like a worn-out party girl.
As the sky lightened on the first day of our marriage, I was thinking about death.
I need to go back over to the house, I was thinking. My family would just be waking; the party rental pickup staff would be collecting the used table linens and rolling the tables back into the van. In the hospital, nurses would be silently moving in and out of my father’s room. The heart monitor would be steadily beeping. I wanted to know if any of our family was there: Did anyone get up and go see him? Did anyone call to make sure he was all right?
All Happy Families Page 9