A Wedding on the Banks

by Cathie Pelletier

  On the sixth step he sensed, as a blind mountain climber might, that he was approaching the base of the stairway. He celebrated by lifting his left hip and extracting more of Henri Nadeau’s heaven-reaching vapors. He needed to dance. There were Acadian fiddles playing “Alouette” in both of his feet. It was true he rarely drank, like most hardworking men of the valley, unless it was Saturday night and then, Tabernacle! Jean Claude would stomp his good dress shoes rhythmically upon the hardwood floor of the Acadia Tavern, which had been, in its prime, the J. J. Newberry store. He would toss down shots of Yukon Jack and then dance, holding Amy Joy’s buttocks fast in the palms of his hands during the waltzes. He must find Putois and take her to the Acadia Tavern and twirl her around the old J. J. Newberry floor until they both dropped. He swung his left leg out, in a half pirouette, and felt it make contact with some object before he heard a soft thunk! on the floor. But he didn’t care. He was celebrating. He wished he were lying on top of Putois at that very moment. He could almost smell her, the spray she used in her hair mixed with her perfume. But the smell nauseated him again. It did not mix well with Henri’s hot dogs and Yukon Jack. He kept his eyes closed to avoid the topsy-turviness of the stairs, but it did no good. He felt the mixture of his afternoon’s indulgences surfacing in his mouth, some leaking through his nostrils, and soon he had vomited upon the bottom step of la belle-mère’s stairs.

  Jean Claude had not imagined the fragrance of Amy Joy’s hair spray and perfume. Nor did he imagine hearing voices in some faraway reality. In fact, Amy Joy and Sicily had stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched his descent. Sicily reached down and picked up the pot of Irish shamrocks that had scattered on the floor when Jean Claude kicked it with his foot.

  “These belonged to your grandma Grace,” said Sicily, faint with emotion. “They come straight from Ireland and they’ve been passed around the family for almost sixty years, and now look at them.”

  “They’ll grow back,” said Amy Joy. She grabbed Jean Claude by his booted feet. He kicked to fight her off, but she pulled until he left the last step and lay spread out on the living room floor. Amy Joy hoped Sicily was satisfied now. It was true that Jean Claude had lost that certain je ne sais quoi in her eyes.

  “Do you know what you did?” Amy Joy asked Jean Claude. She pointed to the vomit on the step. Jean Claude’s head slowly followed her arm, down to the hand, and out the pointing finger. His eyes rested on the mixture of food and booze.

  “Non,” he said, and shook his head. “It was le chien.”

  “Chien!” screamed Amy Joy.

  “Please,” said Sicily, who had sunk down into the sofa, still battling nausea from the sights, smells, and sounds of getting to know her future son-in-law. “Please don’t speak any more French.” She held a fistful of the shamrocks, which Jean Claude Cloutier had seemingly chosen for his symbolic attack upon the Irish ancestry of his future bride.

  “You’re blaming this on my dog!” Amy Joy shouted. “Chien my ass!”

  “It’s too bad your aunt Pearl couldn’t have the pleasure of meeting your future husband,” Sicily said.

  “Would you stop thinking about yourself, as usual?” asked Amy Joy. She had gotten Jean Claude to his feet and was leading him to the door. “Come help me get him out to the car.” Sicily tried to help, but could not bring herself to touch this French person.

  “Allons danser!” Jean Claude shouted and began to stomp his feet. He could almost feel the old J. J. Newberry floor sagging under his weight. “Dansons!” He clapped his hands and motioned to Sicily.

  “Oh no,” said Sicily, and mashed the shamrocks against her bosom. “He’s gonna do one of them French dances in our living room! Stop him, Amy Joy, before he breaks all my Avon pieces!”

  “Stop it, Jean!’ Amy Joy yelled.

  “Oh, it’s no use,” Sicily wept. “Once them people get it into their heads to dance, there’s no stopping them. Their feet are French.”

  Jean Claude escaped Amy Joy’s grip and jumped onto the sofa. So la belle-mère thought he wasn’t such a good dancer, did she? Well, he would show her what dancing was all about. There wasn’t a single soul in Mattagash, Maine, with any rhythm. Everyone knew that. All the rhythm on the American side of the border had been given to the French descendants of the old Canadian settlers. Yes, the Catholics had all the rhythm in the state of Maine, even to the musical kind. Jean Claude jumped off the sofa and into Sicily’s face.

  “Allons danser, belle-mère!” Jean Claude shouted to Sicily, who recognized that she was being referred to as a mare before she was swept off her feet. Jean Claude reeled her around, occasionally bouncing her off the wall. The smell of booze was heavy on his breath.

  “Are you satisfied now?” Amy Joy yelled. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? I hope he dances you to pieces!” Amy Joy grabbed the new spring-summer issue of the Sears Roebuck catalog and began to wallop Jean on the backs of his knees. The pounding knocked the dancers against the wall in a fast embrace. Sicily caught her breath, and then pointed to the catalog.

  “Please don’t tear that,” she whispered. “I’ve yet to order a single thing from it.”

  “You let my mother go this minute,” Amy Joy ordered Jean Claude.

  “She dance good, her,” Jean Claude said, heavily winded, and even in the midst of such utter humiliation Sicily had to suppress a blush. Amy Joy whacked him again, this time on the elbows. The catalog ripped.

  “Please, dear,” said Sicily. “Be careful with the pages.” The balmy arrival of April had reminded her to order a new lawn chair. She and Jean Claude were still leaning with their backs against the wall, harmonious at last in that they were both fighting for breath.

  “Well, this is one big happy family, if I ever saw one,” Pearl McKinnon Ivy said from the doorway. “Don’t you people ever answer a knock?”

  “It’s Pearl!” said Sicily, and broke away from Jean Claude’s arms.

  “You want to dance, you?” Jean Claude asked the bosomy woman now standing before him. Chalice de Vierge! They were lining up to dance with him. This one would be like dancing with a plow horse, but no matter. He reached his hand out to Pearl and then proceeded to slide slowly across the wall until he hit the hardwood floor with a thump, taking an end lamp and two Avon candlesticks with him in a crescendo of breaking glass.

  “Jean Claude Cloutier,” Amy Joy introduced him to Pearl.

  “The groom,” said Sicily.

  Pearl stared. Suddenly Thelma Parsons didn’t seem like such an awful addition to her family.

  “We were practicing for the wedding,” Sicily said quickly. Her hair was lopping in all directions on her head. Her face and neck were flushed red and her apron was twisted around to her side. “French people dance an awful lot at weddings,” she explained.

  “On sofas?” asked Pearl. So she had been watching from the doorway all along. The snoop.

  “Sometimes,” said Sicily.

  “If there’s one around,” Amy Joy added.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Pearl asked.

  “He’s exhausted,” said Amy Joy. “He’s been rehearsing for the wedding all week.”

  “Looks more like he’s been rehearsing for the honeymoon,” said Pearl. “Anyway, I just stopped by for the key to the old house. What’s that smell?” She sniffed the air. “Have you been grilling hot dogs?”

  “Yup,” said Amy Joy quickly. “We grilled all evening.”

  “Spring finally here and all,” added Sicily.

  Pearl walked over to the pot of smashed shamrocks. The trios of little leaves, which had already closed for the night, were clinging desperately to the pot.

  “Is that a batch of Mama’s original shamrocks?” she asked.

  “That sure looks like them,” said Sicily. She hoped Amy Joy might say something. Even Jean Claude’s breaking new wind would give her time to think.
/>   “Is it a French custom to throw them on the floor before a wedding?”

  “Well, here’s the key,” said Sicily. She fished it out of her apron pocket, which was now on her rear hip. She knew Pearl would be stopping for it, but she hadn’t expected to give it to her under such circumstances. She had imagined herself driving over with Pearl and unlocking the big front door, and their going into the old homestead as sisters. The way women do in movies. And they would say warm things to each other, like “Remember this” and “Remember that,” and the old house would come to life around them. But this is what happened when French Catholics infiltrated good Protestant, English-speaking families. They crumbled like cookies. Like that unleavened bread those Catholics were always chewing on during mass.

  “The telephone man came yesterday and hooked you up a telephone, like you wanted,” Sicily added.

  Pearl said nothing more. It was obvious that what was going on was nothing more than washing off the dirt. She wasn’t sure what kind of dirt, or just how much, but it was typical of Mattagashers, especially of McKinnons, to hide every wart and mole they could, even from other family members. Sometimes especially from family members.

  “I’ll be running along, then,” said Pearl. She was thankful that Sicily looked too distraught to follow her over to the old house. She wanted to walk inside alone. She had even asked Marvin if he would wait a few minutes in the car. “Marvin’s out in the car. We’re pretty tired.”

  “You get some rest, then,” said Sicily, and attempted to swing Pearl around, point her to the door. “It’s good to see you,” she said, shoving.

  “What’s that?” asked Pearl.

  “Where?” asked Sicily.

  “Right there,” said Pearl, and pointed to the moist pile on the bottom step of Sicily’s stairs.

  “Dog puke,” said Amy Joy.

  A MCKINNON IS A MCKINNON IS A MCKINNON: MARGIE’S GHOST IS BACK, BACK, BACK

  “Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

  As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

  Are melted into air, into thin air…

  We are such stuff

  As dreams are made on; and our little life

  Is rounded with a sleep.”

  —William Shakespeare, The Tempest

  The very first night in the old McKinnon homestead welcomed Pearl McKinnon Ivy with terrifying dreams. Maybe the coconut cream pie from which she and Marvin had eaten two extra-large slices before bedtime added a luster to the nightmare. Or maybe the old-settler ghosts were unhappy over being stirred up, fidgety with the intrusion from the outer world they never visited in their time, when their bones held flesh. Or maybe they had questions about that world to ask the prodigal daughter. One thing Pearl could be sure of was that they’d welcome her back. It wasn’t good to stray so far from home, downriver, away from the rituals.

  “If you’re a missionary, it’s okay,” Pearl had remembered hearing the day she bumped south on a Greyhound bus to Portland. The day she had abandoned (that’s how Margie had put it) her family, her town, a way of life, and set off for Portland with the dream to become a hairstylist.

  “If you’re a missionary, it’s all right,” Margie had told her. “Then you got a purpose. Then God will watch out for you.”

  “Well, maybe that’s why there’s so many missionaries,” Pearl had answered. “Maybe all that religious zeal is just nature’s way of covering up for ants in the pants.” Then Pearl had snapped the tiny padlocks shut on her suitcase. End of argument. But for years she sensed that Marge took pleasure in Pearl’s having ended up married into an undertaking family. God wasn’t watching out for her, as he surely would a missionary. God wouldn’t let one of his sheep marry a grave digger.

  Pearl opened her eyes and adjusted them to the architecture of her old bedroom. She felt the row of beaded perspiration on her forehead turn cold, and reached up with her pajama sleeve to wipe it away. She lay next to Marvin and stared at the ceiling. Outside, she could hear the Mattagash River bursting at its seams. When the water was lower and the boulders along the shore emerged out of the deep, the river would be even noisier. Pearl knew this. She remembered. She remembered a lot of things, like how to spy a good fishing hole after a heavy rain caused the water to rise just so. How to discover where the kingfisher’s tunnel nest was hiding by finding the telltale scratches around a hole in the riverbank. And Pearl remembered all kinds of wonderful things about the old-timers she’d grown up with. She recalled how Old Man Gardner could harvest a bucketful of earthworms just by pounding a pointed piece of wood, what he called a stob, into the ground and then rubbing a piece of steel across the stob. The vibrations in the earth drove all those worms right out of their minds, and Pearl remembered seeing them rush to the surface and give themselves up. A kid could walk along and pick up enough fish bait for a week, just like picking wild strawberries. Old Man Gardner used to boast that on good days he could harvest over two thousand of the squiggly, wiggly things. Fishermen from out of state bought them up as if they were something good to eat. And old Mrs. Sophia Mullins was a case to remember, too. There was no one in Mattagash in that day and age who would even attempt to dig a well until old Sophia hobbled around with her willow switch jumping in her hands like something alive. Divining water. Pearl supposed backhoes and fancy hole diggers had replaced Old Sophia, who had been divining water in her coffin for at least forty years. And Samuel Gifford, the old half Indian, would make a stick from a cherry tree and beat ash out so fine it looked like yarn.

  “They never built an ash pounder that good,” Pearl said aloud. “Yet I can barely remember Samuel Gifford.” She felt Marvin stir sleepily beside her and, rather than wake him, she let the ghosts of Old Man Gardner, Sophia Mullins, and Samuel Gifford take their worms, and willow switches, and ash-woven baskets and go back to peddle their wares among the dead.

  In the hallway Pearl followed the tiny night-light she’d left on in the kitchen. A glass of warm milk would help her to sleep. Margie used to do that. Often Pearl would wake up in the middle of the night and hear a soft clattering in the kitchen below. Margie. Unable to sleep again.

  “She must have been lonely,” Pearl thought. She put a pan on the stove. She took milk from the refrigerator, Marge’s same old Kenmore, and poured a generous amount into the pan. She turned the gas burner on and watched the flame engulf it with a blue hiss. The Mullins girls had done a good job of getting the house in order. It was almost as good as new. Almost. Pearl could detect a most noticeable sagging, with her older sister gone a decade. Marge had kept a discerning eye on every nook and cranny. But winters are cruel in northern Maine, and no matter how lovingly spring comes back to caress the bruises, to lick the wounds, there is a stiffness that never leaves. The joints of the old McKinnon homestead, like the joints of its last human occupants, were stiffening with age.

  “It’s tired is all,” Pearl whispered, as the floor beneath her feet creaked with her weight. “But it’s still nice. It’s still home.” She stopped short, sure that she heard a scuffling in the basement, or outside, somewhere. When silence came back at her, she smiled.

  “The mice must be as big as I remember them,” she thought, and opened a box of graham crackers from which she selected three. She and Marvin had picked up a few things to get them through the night, but tomorrow it would be necessary to stock the fridge. She would also have to explain the phone to Marvin tomorrow, with some kind of lie.

  “Why a phone when we’ll only be here a week?” he was bound to ask her when he discovered it in the den.

  “Oh, just to keep in touch,” Pearl would say. “Anything can happen.” Soon, though, she would be compelled to tell her husband that she was staying on in Mattagash.

  Pearl stood in front of Marge’s old china cabinet and bit into a graham cracker. The baby roses were still on all the dishes, a pattern Pearl dearly loved. How many Sunday dinners had the three
sisters and the Reverend spent hovering above those roses like a family of bees? Pearl even remembered how many roses had been on each plate.

  “Twelve,” she said, and pressed a finger against the glass door. And she used to count them as she ate, knowing that when a dozen flowers surfaced, the meal would be over, her plate empty, dessert waiting. It was wise of Sicily to leave the dishes in the cabinet. To leave most of Marge’s stuff right where it was, in the old house.

  “There’s no room in my house either,” Sicily had agreed with Pearl. “I suppose I could rent it all furnished to one of the schoolteachers who has to travel all the way from Watertown, but somehow it don’t seem right. Some things shouldn’t be moved. And they shouldn’t be trifled with by strangers. But one day, Pearl, we need to sort through it all and divide it between Amy Joy and your granddaughters.”