by Sue Margolis
“Scary Movie!” Grace shouted.
“Since when was Scary Movie a book?” Scarlett came back.
But Grace wasn’t to be defeated. “Oooh, I know! I know! Hairy Potter.”
“Yes!” Nana cried.
Hairy Potter. We all fell about, the way you do when you’ve downed several White Russians with Pink Lady chasers and the lamest joke seems hilarious.
By now we were on champagne. Nobody could believe the rate at which Nana Ida—who only ever had the occasional glass of Amontillado before dinner—was knocking them back. We couldn’t work out how she hadn’t fallen asleep hours ago. Who knew that she could hold her liquor like that?
Mum was mellow, but not so far gone that she couldn’t point out to Nana that none of the Harry Potter books or films had actually been called Harry Potter. “It has to be Harry Potter and the something … like The Goblet of Fire.”
“So bite me,” Nana said, hiccuping. We all corpsed.
It was Mum’s idea that the family should be together the night before the wedding. The rest of us agreed, so she booked us into the Park Royal, where the wedding reception was going to be held. She insisted on us having a suite, but the only one available was the penthouse suite.
“But that’s going to cost a fortune,” I said.
She shrugged. “Oh, who cares? You wouldn’t let me pay for the wedding. Come on, it’ll be fun.” She’d also arranged for Josh and me to stay in the suite on our wedding night. What we were going to do with three bedrooms, three en suite bathrooms and a living room, I had no idea. Josh, on the other hand, said that to get our money’s worth—or rather Mum’s money’s worth—we had to have sex in every room.
Our night at the Park Royal wasn’t even our wedding present. Mum had also given us money to put towards the building work on my flat. She was adamant that since she wasn’t being allowed to pay for the wedding, Dad’s life insurance money should be used to help us set up home.
“Omigod, this is so bling,” Mum said now, as we walked into the penthouse suite. “I’ve never seen so much marble and gold.” We took in the giant gold eagle on a plinth, the goldpainted Corinthian columns decorated with grape-munching cherubs.
“It looks like Snoop Dogg’s boudoir,” Grace said, laughing.
“I always wanted a porch with pillars,” Nana said. “I do think they say elegance.”
“No, Nana,” Scarlett said. “What they say is Ed Bundy just won the lottery.”
“Thank heavens the banqueting suite doesn’t look like this,” I said. “People would think they’d come to a Roman orgy.”
We put down our bags and laid our dresses—which were all under polythene—on the back of the giant sofa. Then we began exploring. The bathrooms contained more gold. This time it was fish taps that spewed water from their mouths. Each bathroom also had a wall-mounted flat-screen TV and car wash–style shower. The bedrooms were as big as my entire flat with beds that could sleep six. Each had a built-in massage system. In the vast living room, a wall of glass offered glorious views across London to the hills of distant Surrey.
It was early evening. We all got into our fluffy Park Royal dressing gowns and slippers. Mum got on the phone and had the first round of cocktails sent up. A couple of hours later we were starving, so we ordered room service dinner. Sprawled over the huge feather-backed sofas we ate hamburgers and profiteroles and watched a DVD of Knocked Up, which we’d found in the suite’s DVD library, if you please. I shuffled along the sofa, closer to Mum, and placed my hand on hers. “Thanks for spoiling me like this,” I said, squeezing her hand. “I’m aware that I’m a very lucky girl.”
“You’re more than welcome, hon,” she said, giving me a hug and a kiss. We went back to the film. A few moments later, she dug me in the ribs. “Don’t they make a cute couple?” She was watching Scarlett and Grace snuggled up on the sofa, feeding each other profiteroles.
I agreed that they did indeed make a cute couple, and they truly did, but it didn’t stop me wanting to ask Mum why she never said that about Josh and me. Didn’t we make a cute couple? But challenging her didn’t feel right. To have said anything would have appeared childish and needy and created unnecessary tension, which, on the night before my wedding, was the last thing either of us needed. It upset me, though, to think that deep down Mum still didn’t quite approve of my marrying Josh.
“And they are going to make wonderful parents,” she went on, turning the screw. “I just wish this friend of theirs would make up his mind about whether he wants to be a father. It’s not right to leave the two of them hanging like this.” I reminded her that it wasn’t Richie who was the problem, but his partner, Tom.
Josh called my cell halfway through the film. I asked Scarlett to put it on pause and went into the bedroom. “I just wanted to see how you were doing,” he said. I could barely hear him over the noise in the pub.
“I’m great. I know most people get prewedding nerves, but I just can’t wait until tomorrow. Marrying you feels like the most natural thing in the world. You OK?”
“Yeah, just hoping the guys haven’t got me a stripogram. Plus, I think that maybe the jitters have started to kick in a bit. I keep worrying about something going wrong at the last minute.”
“Hey, c’mon, it’s all going to be fine. We’ve planned this thing like a military operation.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I need to stop worrying. So … I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yep. See you tomorrow.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
It was midnight by the time we started playing charades. After about half an hour, nobody had the energy to carry on. What was more, the alcohol was beginning to make Nana maudlin.
“Of course, with my heart like it is, I might not live to see any more family weddings.”
“What?” Mum said. “Your heart is fine. After your last physical, I checked with your doctor.”
“Physical, schimisical,” she said waving a hand in front of her. “At my age you just go to be carbon dated. Anyway, what do doctors know? They tell you you’re OK and the next minute you’re dead.”
“Mum, you’re exhausted. We need to get you to bed.”
But Nana kept on about how she would soon be gone, laid to rest beside Grandpa Joe, God rest his soul. “Of course, I will be taking up residence in the best burial plot in the classiest cemetery in town. It overlooks the lake on Hampstead Heath, you know.”
“We know,” Mum said.
“My darling Joe—he was so good to me. Did I ever tell you how he came by that plot?”
“Only a few hundred times,” Mum said.
“Nana hasn’t told me,” Grace said.
My grandmother needed no more encouragement.
She explained how Grandpa Joe had bought their joint resting place in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The powers that be at the synagogue, who were always looking for ways to raise money, had decided to play into the congregation’s fears of imminent nuclear annihilation by offering “never to be repeated” twofer deals on burial plots in the Jewish cemetery that they part owned.
Almost nobody took advantage of the offer, on the grounds that if a bomb went up, there would be nobody left to bury them. Grandpa—cautious and conservative in every area of his life apart from business—took a gamble on America and Russia settling their differences. He ended up negotiating with all the local synagogues and buying the entire cemetery. He spent the next twenty years selling burial plots at a very decent profit.
“And that is how my darling Joe made our fortune,” Nana said.
Mum looked at Scarlett and me and rolled her eyes. “Yes, but you left out the part where he lost it.”
“You know we don’t talk about that.”
The tragic epilogue to this story was that Grandpa Joe lost nearly all his money in the early nineties, when he invested in what he was convinced was going to be the next big thing: self-heating overcoats.
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“Come on,” Mum said to Nana. “Let’s get you to bed.” Mum took her hand. “Up you get, old woman.”
Nana laughed. “Less of the old, if you please. I’m not dying quite yet.” She raised herself off the sofa with an oomph.
Scarlett, Grace and I drained our champagne glasses and said our good nights. Grace reminded me about drinking plenty of water before going to sleep, so that I wouldn’t wake up with a hangover.
“Will do.”
She and my sister headed to their room, arms around each other. Scarlett’s head was resting on Grace’s shoulder and she was singing: “Going to the chapel, and we’re gonna get married …”
“Come on, sweetie,” Grace said, planting a kiss on Scarlett’s cheek. “We need to get you to bed, too.”
Not only was I exhausted, but after drinking so much, I was at the stage where if I’d lain on the floor I would have needed to hang on. I went to the bathroom and drank two glasses of water. Then I climbed into bed. I imagined that in a few moments, I would be dead to the world, but even after a twenty-minute bed massage, I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about Dad. I couldn’t remember when I stopped missing him, but at some stage in the last seventeen years, living without him became normal and I had stopped crying for him. Tonight, as I lay in bed, Dad’s absence seemed raw again. I wiped away the tears that had started to tumble down my cheeks. He wasn’t going to be with me on my wedding day, and I wanted him there so much. Mum had agreed to give me away, which I knew would be fine, but it was Dad’s arm I wanted.
I thought back to the conversation we’d had just before he died—the one in the car park on Hampstead Heath, when he talked about me getting married and said how important it was to find a soul mate. I was in no doubt that I had found one in Josh, and it made me sad that Dad wasn’t around to get to know him and tell me how much he approved of my choice.
I don’t know when I dropped off, but the next thing I knew, light was flooding into my room and I could hear Nana on the phone to room service, ordering coffee, OJ and croissants. I looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was just after eight. My head throbbed. The inside of my mouth had turned to felt.
I pulled on my dressing gown and went to brush my teeth.
“Can you believe it?” Nana said as I came into the living room. “The big day’s finally arrived. So how are you feeling?”
I had to admit that I’d woken up feeling slightly less relaxed than I had been last night. “I guess I’m a bit nervous, but not omigod-am-I-doing-the-right-thing? nervous. More am-I-going-to-fall-arse-over-tit-as-I walk-down-the-aisle? nervous.”
“You’ve got a bit of stage fright. That’s normal. Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”
Everybody else got up when they heard the breakfast trolley arrive, but none of us—apart from Nana, who appeared to have not the remotest symptom of a hangover—could manage any solids.
“Just look at this weather,” she said, staring out of the window at the gray and drizzle. “The forecast promised warm and sunny. How is it they always get it wrong? Such a pity, today of all days.” She started offering round pastries. “You have to try the pains au chocolat. They just melt in your mouth.”
The four of us grimaced as one.
Trevor and Rob arrived just after ten. Trevor, my long-of-tinted-lash, tight-of-buttock hairdresser, had been tending to my locks for years. Today he was tending to us all. His boyfriend, Rob, who was a TV and film makeup artist, was going to get busy with his brushes and palette. I’d just stepped out of the shower when I heard them arrive. I got back into my robe and went into the living room to say hi. “Here comes the bride,” Trevor cried. “Come and say hello to your Aunty Trevor.” I gave him a double kiss. I was about to introduce everybody, but I realized that Nana had gotten there first. “Tally, did you know that Trevor once weighed nearly three hundred pounds? You’d never think it to look at him now, would you? And not an ounce of loose flesh anywhere. He’s been showing me.”
In five minutes Nana had found out more about Trevor than I had in ten years.
“No, I didn’t know,” I said. “That’s remarkable.”
“OK, fabulous as I am,” Trevor said, “that’s enough about me.” He picked up a lock of my hair and pulled a face. “Ooh, somebody needs a protein pack.” Then Rob started peering at my skin. “Those pores may not be wide open, but they’re definitely ajar.”
“Blimey,” I said. “Don’t you two have a way of making a girl feel special on her wedding day?”
“But that’s precisely what we plan to do,” Trevor said, explaining that they had come laden with magic hair and skin potions.
While I lay on one of the sofas, hair and face covered in gloop apparently designed to revitalize and regenerate, Trevor and Rob got busy with the others. For the next three hours they sashayed and bustled, ironed and blended. They also bitched about their A-list clients—some of whom were on Fein Management’s books, so Mum didn’t say much. Nana, on the other hand, lapped it up, even though she had no idea who these stars were who had taken up kabbalah and/or the baby-food diet, or done the Hoffman Process. “So was that invented by Dustin Hoffman? I loved him in The Graduate.”
Grace’s hair needed the least attention, since she wore it closecropped. Trevor ran some wax through it and she was good to go. She spent the rest of the morning snapping the rest of us being beautified. There was me in my face and hair gunk. Nana in rollers, having her eyebrows debushed. Scarlett and Mum being “ironed.”
My hair was the most complicated. When we first discussed wedding hair, Trevor had suggested leaving it long. “I’m thinking a retro vibe would really work with your dress.” We had decided on loose shoulder-length curls.
Trevor tonged while I drank more coffee and pulled daft faces for the camera.
“Wow,” Rob said when Trevor finished. “Great job, boyfriend. Tally, you look like Liz Taylor in Quo Vadis.”
“No! Really? You think? It doesn’t look too Jessica Rabbit?”
Trevor tapped my wrist and told me to behave.
“OK,” Rob said, “I’m thinking eyeliner with a flick and heavy on the lips—to give her that real vintage look.”
Rob was a genius. Not only had he slammed my pores shut, but my makeup was perfect. I adored it, particularly the eyeliner flicks. Whenever I attempted cat’s eyes I always ended up with panda eyes.
The last job was to put my hat in place. I’d found my little fifties creation in a vintage shop in Islington. It wasn’t so much a hat as a wide band covered in tiny feathers. These were antique rose—the exact same color as the underskirts that helped puff out my dress. “It’s a great look, particularly with the bathrobe,” Trevor said, arranging the band over my head. Grace snapped a picture.
By two, we were thanking Trevor and Rob and double kissing them good-bye.
Scarlett and I went to my room and she helped me into my dress. “Just look at you,” she said, zipping me up. “My big sister in her wedding dress. Sweetie, you look stunning. Absolutely stunning.” I slipped on my satin heels and looked at myself in the full-length mirror.
“Come on, admit it,” she said. “You look fabulous.”
“OK, I look fabulous. Totally, wonderfully, gloriously fabulous. Josh will be knocked out when he sees me. He is so going to want me in this dress.”
“You are not wrong. And you know what? Dad would have been so proud.”
For a moment I had a lump in my throat.
Scarlett said that time was getting on and she needed to get dressed. No sooner had she gone than Nana appeared.
“Nana, look at you.”
“Will I do?”
“Will you ever.” With her elegant fringeless bob and pale peach dress and coat trimmed with tiny beads, she could have passed for sixty instead of eighty-odd. “Look, my eye shadow matches my dress, and Rob even made me put on mascara. I haven’t worn that since your cousin Bradley’s bar mitzvah in 1979.”
“And you’re wearing heels.”
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p; “I know, but I’ve put some comfy slippers in my bag for later … Anyway, forget about me. What about you? Darling, you look like a princess. My little Tally is getting married. I can’t believe it.” She went to fetch Mum, who was swearing and cursing as she struggled to get into her Magic lose-ten pounds-in-an-instant Knickers.
When Mum finally appeared, I was knocked out. The gray jersey silk full-length dress, which I’d seen only on the hanger, looked truly fabulous—as I knew it would. The deeply scooped neck and long, skintight sleeves were perfect. As she gave a twirl, I remarked on how well it skimmed her newly smoothed figure and clung in all the right places. I also made the point that the gray looked stunning with her red hair. To complete the effect, she was wearing chunky, typically Mum jewelry, which she’d bought only a few days ago and I hadn’t seen. There was an outsize cherry crystal cocktail ring, a row of matching crystal bracelets and big red-and-gray drop earrings.
“So you like?” she said.
“I absolutely love. Mum, you look gorgeous.”
Just then Scarlett and Grace made their entrance. They were wearing slinky full-length halter-neck numbers the color of milk chocolate.
At three o’clock on the dot, reception called up. The wedding cars had arrived to take us to the synagogue. The plan was that I would travel in one car with Mum and Nana. Scarlett and Grace would take the second. The three of us picked up our bouquets—deep antique pink roses for me, cream roses for Scarlett and Grace. As we walked to the elevator, Grace took my arm. “I just wanted to say thank you for letting me be one of your bridesmaids. We haven’t known each other long, so you didn’t have to ask me. Scarlett really appreciates it, and so do I.”
“You really don’t need to thank me. I’ve seen how happy you make my sister. Believe me, it’s my pleasure.”
I found myself wondering how Dad would have felt about Scarlett’s being gay. She reckoned that these days most dads were cool about having lesbian daughters. It meant that no man would come between them and break the father-daughter bond. Dads were used to girls having best friends. They reasoned—according to Scarlett—that a lesbian relationship wasn’t so different. After all, what could two women get up to in bed?