“Here you go, ladies,” Jane said breezily, setting the tray down on the coffee table. Edith-Louise was sitting in the recliner, and Jane’s mother had settled down on the couch. Jane was pleased—the couch was very deep and her mother had trouble getting out of it unassisted. “You two just relax.”
“You’re not joining us?” Edith-Louise looked alarmed by that prospect, and who could possibly blame her?
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Jane said. “I have to pack for the honeymoon.”
She walked quickly from the room. She knew she should stay, be kind and gracious. Have cups of peppermint tea and lemon snaps, maybe. Ask Edith-Louise what Luke had been like as a little boy. Practice calligraphy. Press some flowers. (What did people do with their mothers-in-law all day? She would have to figure that out.)
Instead, Jane walked into her bedroom and sat down on her bed. She pried off her shoes and winced at the sight of the red, chafed skin on her feet. She had a blister on the knuckle of each of her big toes, and more on her little toes, more on her heels. They glowed like hot wires under her skin, fires she couldn’t put out. She flopped back, her feet still touching the floor, and watched the ceiling fan rotate.
In the other room, she heard her mother say to Edith-Louise, “Now, I myself have never seen the point of organic food.”
Edith-Louise said something too faint to hear.
Jane would get up in a second and pack. She had a new pale green nightgown, still in the lingerie-store box, and she should take a cardigan in case the restaurants were chilly, and her camera, and her passport, and—
Jane fell asleep.
* * *
—
She woke up—unrefreshed, unrestored, decidedly unfriendly—in a sweaty confusion. She sat up. The doorbell chimed, and she realized it was ringing for the second time—the first ring must have woken her.
She walked out of her bedroom and into the living room, where her mother and Edith-Louise were still sitting. Evidently, they’d been discussing families.
“Now, tell me about your brother,” her mother was saying. “Isn’t he sort of a ne’er-do-well?”
“Gene’s on the board of the Red Cross!” Edith-Louise’s voice was delicately edged with exasperation.
“I wonder where I got the idea he was such a layabout?” Jane’s mother said idly. “Has he had any run-ins with law enforcement?”
Jane pattered past them and down the short hall to the front door. Her blistered feet were stinging, and the inside of her mouth was dry and clothlike. She yanked open the door, knowing her face had a hostile, Thor-like expression and yet was helpless to change it.
It was Jimmy and his mother.
Mrs. Jellico was a heavyset woman, with the kind of white, wooly curls that seem absolute and inevitable, as though her hair might have gone white when she was a toddler. Every single time Jane had met her, Mrs. Jellico was wearing the same awful lace-collared polyester blue dress sprigged with small green leaves. (Was it actually possible she owned only one dress? Maybe she just had a bunch that looked alike.) Worse, she had fearful blue eyes, a constant self-conscious smile, and a whispery voice. And then there was Jimmy himself, who didn’t get jokes and found even the simplest idiom confusing. Jane considered them the most high-maintenance pair in all Boyne City, and here they were showing up at her house uninvited!
Except they were invited; Jane had invited them herself. Back in some previous lifetime when she was planning this day and thought what a pleasant, gracious touch it would be to have everyone over to the house before the rehearsal.
“Come in,” she forced herself to say, aware that her tone was neither pleasant nor gracious.
“Sorry we’re early, Jane,” Jimmy said.
“I gave them a ride,” Freida said, coming up behind them. She was wearing a floral-patterned dress and a flower crown made of roses, daisies, and what looked like Italian parsley. (Freida took her maid-of-honor role seriously.) Her cheeks were flushed, and her burnished curls were amplified from the humidity. She looked so fresh and cool that Jane envied her unbearably.
Over Freida’s shoulder, she saw a blue Buick edge its way into the driveway. It was Luke and Raymond, straight from picking up Uncle Gene at the Traverse City airport. When they got out, Jane saw that they were all wearing suits and ties. Uncle Gene was going to be the best man. He was another older, sunburnt version of Luke, and Jane knew from previous meetings that he liked to talk about falconry.
“Hi, Lance!” Freida called, and Jane poked her sharply.
“Hey!” Luke called, holding up two shopping bags from the party store. “We brought a cheeseball and some crackers, and chips and salsa, and olives and almonds.”
Thank God! This alone seemed reason enough to marry him. Although, obviously, there were other reasons. Love and whatnot.
Everyone came into the house, and Jane did a round of introductions while Luke unpacked the food. “You go on and get ready,” he said when she came into the kitchen. “I can handle this.”
Jane hurried into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub, putting Band-Aids on her blisters. She splashed water on her face, and then swiftly applied mascara and a swipe of rosy-red lipstick, examining her reflection critically. She looked pale and washed-out, ghostly, like an overexposed photo found in a drawer.
She crossed the hall to her bedroom. She could hear her mother saying, “Now, Gene, tell me—” but she closed the bedroom door before she heard the rest.
She stripped off her clothes and threw them in the hamper. She pulled on a narrow pale blue skirt and a beige cotton Victorian blouse. The blouse was high-necked with puffed sleeves and corset-style lacing at the waist. Duncan had told her once that she looked like a sexy schoolmarm in this outfit. She drew her hair into a ladylike knot at the nape of her neck. She slipped on ballet flats—Thank you! she imagined her feet crying. We’ll do whatever you ask, but please don’t put on those other shoes again!—and surveyed herself in the mirror. How much better this thrift-store outfit suited her than that awful pink wedding dress, which was—oh, shit—still lying in the trunk of her car like a murder victim waiting to be dumped in the dark of night.
She put on dangly seed-pearl earrings and then opened the bedroom door a crack. She could hear the rumble of voices and the clinking of glasses, and smelled the smell that is particular to cocktail parties and not altogether pleasant: stale peanuts and aftershave. She steeled herself to go out and join them. She was the bride. This was her special day, and these people were waiting to help her celebrate. They were good people, all of them—such good people. It should not matter that they wanted to talk about the difference between true hawks and booted eagles, or the cost-benefit analysis of mushroom farming, or the water spot on the living room ceiling, which Jane’s mother was convinced was black mold.
It should not matter, yet it did.
* * *
—
They could have all walked to the church, which was only six blocks away, but instead they divided up into foursomes, like bridge players, and drove there in a small caravan. Jane and Luke rode in Freida’s car and when they pulled into the parking lot, she could see that Duncan and Darcy were sitting on the church steps, talking to the church handyman.
“Welcome, Jane!” the handyman exclaimed as Jane and the others made their way up the walk. He gestured to include everyone. “Welcome, friends and family!”
Jane realized the handyman was actually Reverend Palumbo, wearing paint-spattered coveralls. (Evidently the minister moonlighted, too.)
“Hi, Reverend,” Jane said.
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, young man,” Reverend Palumbo said to Luke.
“This is my fiancé,” Jane said. “La— Luke Armstrong.”
Dear God! She had almost called him Lance. She flushed deeply and stared at the g
round. She had the sense that Duncan was smiling, but when she glanced at him, his face was pleasantly neutral.
“Pleased to meet you,” Reverend Palumbo said, shaking Luke’s hand.
“You, too,” Luke said. “These are my parents, Raymond and Edith-Louise, and my uncle—”
Jane sighed. Would the introductions never stop? This whole day had been like singing “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” endlessly. (This comparison was not idle speculation on Jane’s part; her classes had always loved that song.) Luke already knew Duncan, and knew about him, had agreed to have him at the wedding. He liked Duncan. He said that if you weren’t trying to date Duncan, you didn’t have a problem with him. He liked Jimmy, too. It had been his idea to have Jimmy serve as their usher. Luke really was the nicest man.
As always, when she hadn’t seen him for a while, Jane was struck by how handsome Duncan was. His features were so regular that his face should have been boring to look at, but its symmetry caught people’s attention, made their gazes linger. It made them think, Is he famous—? Is that the guy from—? Did he used to be the front man for—? Even his slightly weathered skin looked like the result of too much Hollywood high life, though Jane knew perfectly well it was from plain old lack of sunscreen.
Reverend Palumbo pulled a large ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked the church’s red wooden doors. They all followed him in and stood clustered in the foyer, and those who hadn’t met began another round of John Jingleheimer-ing. Freida introduced Duncan to Luke’s parents and uncle, but she obviously feared saying, This is Duncan, who used to be Jane’s lover, so she kept saying “This is Duncan—” in a foreshortened way.
Duncan himself seemed at ease. “I’m here with Darcy, the photographer,” he said, shaking hands.
“You must be so excited about tomorrow, Jane,” Darcy said. She was in her twenties, and very pretty in a monochromatic way: hazel eyes, chestnut hair, coffee-colored skin. In addition to being a wedding photographer, she worked at the health-food store. Jane liked her. Honest, she did.
“More nervous than excited,” she said.
“Totally normal.” Darcy hitched the strap of her camera bag up on her shoulder. “All brides feel that way. But don’t worry about a thing—it will all come together tomorrow.”
Jane smiled. “I hope so.”
Darcy squeezed her arm. “I’m going to go set up now.” She slipped by Reverend Palumbo and walked down the aisle to a pew about halfway to the front. She began unpacking her camera bag, her long hair falling forward. Jane tried to remember why they had ever ordered the photo package that included rehearsal pictures.
Reverend Palumbo looked around. “Now, which one of you is the wedding coordinator?”
“We don’t have one,” Jane said.
Reverend Palumbo’s look became severe. Jane thought he might quote a Bible verse about wedding coordinators, but all he said was, “Well, who is going to cue the processional?”
Jane glanced at Luke. “We—we hadn’t really thought in terms of a formal processional. Jimmy’s just going to seat people as they arrive.”
“Well, all right,” Reverend Palumbo said. “Jimmy, come over here.”
Everyone rustled around and looked for Jimmy, but they found only Jimmy’s mother, sitting on the foyer bench, hands clasped over the hill of her stomach.
She gave her usual scared rictus smile. “Jimmy had a salsa stain on his shirt, so he went over to the gas station to get some wet paper towels, and if that doesn’t work he’s going to wash the shirt in the bathroom sink and blow it dry with the hand dryer.”
This story was so typically Jimmy that Jane actually wondered for a second whether Mrs. Jellico was joking. But no, she looked serious. Jane wondered if Mrs. Jellico could be pressed into service as a wedding gatekeeper, but she had settled onto the bench in the deeply rooted way of someone who was glad to be off her feet and who intended to stay that way for as long as possible.
“I can cue the processional,” Duncan said. “And I’ll go over it later with Jim.”
“That will have to do,” Reverend Palumbo said. He rubbed his hands together briskly, like a football coach in a huddle. “Now, here’s what happens. I’ll enter from a side door and stand at the front when we’re ready to begin. Once you”—he pointed at Duncan—“see me up there, start sending them out. Leave at least two minutes between each one so we don’t get a bottleneck up there by the altar. Usually we have a wedding coordinator”—he shot Jane a disapproving look—“and they often recommend reciting the Lord’s Prayer between each member of the processional as a way of marking time.”
Good God, there was no way Jimmy could handle that! (If he was even here tomorrow. Jane felt there was a strong possibility Jimmy would spend the night in the gas station, wetting and drying his shirt endlessly.) It would have to be Duncan.
Reverend Palumbo was still talking. “Then it goes mother of the bride, parents of the groom, best man, maid of honor, bride and groom.”
“Wait,” Jane’s mother said. “Isn’t the groom supposed to be waiting at the front?”
Honestly. Had Jane’s mother ever just accepted anything? Ever chosen silence as an option? Ever thought, Well, that’s unusual, but perhaps I’d be better not saying anything? No. Jane could not remember a single such episode.
“This is the order that Jane specified,” Reverend Palumbo said. It was true. Jane had liked the idea of walking down the aisle with Luke.
“But traditionally, the groom—”
Luke put his arm around Jane’s mother’s shoulders. “I tell you what, Phyllis,” he said. “Why don’t I walk down the aisle with you and escort you to your seat?”
“Well,” Jane’s mother looked pleasantly flustered. “I guess maybe—”
Luke gave her a squeeze. “And then I can walk to the front of the church and we’ll watch Jane walk down together. Would you like that?”
“Yes, I think—” Jane’s mother began.
“Perfect,” Luke said. He winked at Jane and then looked at Duncan. “So now it goes Phyllis and me, my parents, Uncle Gene, Freida, Jane.”
Imagine how much Luke must love Jane. Just imagine.
Right then, the church door opened, and a petite lady with short salt-and-pepper hair stepped briskly inside. “Hello, everyone!” she called. “Sorry to be late!”
Instantly, the air was electric with jealousy, and from this Jane knew that the lady must be Beatrice Mooney, the church organist.
Last spring, when Jane had called Freida to tell her that she and Luke had set a wedding date, Freida had interrupted happily, “And you want me to play the organ!”
“No,” Jane had said. “I want you to be my maid of honor.”
“Oh.” Freida went quiet for a moment. “Who is going to play the organ?”
“I don’t know,” Jane said. “The church organist, I guess.”
“Which church?”
“Mercy Fellowship.”
“Beatrice Mooney is the organist there,” Freida said in a foreboding way. “She rushes the processional every time.”
“Well, anyway—”
“Normally I would suggest you call the church and request me by name,” Freida had said, “but not if it’s Mercy Fellowship. Beatrice Mooney would never stand for it. I hate to speak out against a sister musician, but that woman is like a viper when it comes to sharing her organ time.”
A little pause followed, during which Jane sensed strongly that Freida was hoping she’d say, To hell with Mercy Fellowship, in that case! But instead Jane had said, “Will you be my maid of honor, though?” and Freida had said, “Oh, sure.”
It had been a most unsatisfactory conversation.
Now here was Beatrice Mooney, not looking at all viperlike, although when she saw Freida, she tucked the corners of her mouth up in a smug way. Freida gave her a slit-e
yed look.
“Okay, shall we begin?” Reverend Palumbo asked. “Beatrice, you go ahead and get set up.”
Beatrice gave Freida a final smirk and then sashayed down the aisle toward the organ loft, which was behind the pulpit, concealed by a half wall and some ferns.
“Now I’m going to go around and come in through the side entrance,” Reverend Palumbo said to Duncan. “It may take me a minute because sometimes the lock sticks on the side door. But as soon as I’m up there, Beatrice will start playing and you can send folks down.”
He went out the double doors, and moments later, they heard him rattling the side door. The rattling seemed to go on for a while. “Horse pucky!” he said quite distinctly, and the side door banged open. Reverend Palumbo crossed in front of the pews and stood on the low steps at the front of the church. Unseen, Beatrice played the first chords of Pachelbel’s Canon in D.
Luke offered his arm to Jane’s mother, and together they began walking down the aisle. Darcy raised her camera.
Duncan made no attempt to recite the Lord’s Prayer or even look at his watch. “Okay, your turn,” he said to Luke’s parents. Raymond took Edith-Louise’s arm, and for the first time, Jane noticed that Edith-Louise had changed into a gently flowing black dress with tiny white polka dots. Maybe someday Edith-Louise could teach Jane how to dress. They walked down the aisle.
“Beatrice is rushing the processional,” Freida whispered to Jane. “She’s going to have to repeat the song at this rate.”
“All, right, Uncle Gene, you can go,” Duncan said.
Uncle Gene walked down the aisle in a stiff, self-conscious way that reminded Jane of how some of her shyer students crossed the room to use the pencil sharpener.
Freida took a breath to whisper to Jane again, but Duncan said, “Now, Freida, you stop bad-mouthing Beatrice and get on up here.”
Freida moved to stand by Duncan. “That woman has no innate sense of rhythm,” she said to him. He patted her shoulder reassuringly, but she just made a tsking sound. She went down the aisle, the hem of her flowered dress fluttering indignantly.
Early Morning Riser Page 7
