Going to the Chapel

by Janet Tronstad

  I swear, don’t any of my cousins ever let anything go? “I was eight years old. I tripped and hit him by mistake when I was falling. He knows that—I’ve told him it was a mistake a thousand times.”

  “He says there was nothing around for you to trip over.”

  “We were in the middle of what was left of Aunt Inga’s garden. There were dead tomato vines everywhere. All over the ground. Lots and lots of vines.”

  “He said he couldn’t open his eye for a week.”

  “He just said that so he wouldn’t have to go to school. We were studying the Romans in history and he didn’t like them. Something about Caesar and how you couldn’t trust a guy who had a salad named after him. Jerry hated salad—except for the croutons. And those he only liked because he liked to throw them at people.”

  I wish I had a crouton myself right now.

  Even more I’m beginning to wish we’d had a big storm in California two weeks ago. I know it’s only the end of October, but early storms happen. That’s when Cassie’s cousin impulsively drove to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe and got married. Just think about how weather can affect your life. If the snow had been falling, my guy would have been stuck back at home with his girlfriend and they might have gotten bored with all of the snow and had an argument. He might have gotten mad during the argument and said he was going to Los Angeles where people would appreciate him and I’d be looking at Brad Pitt instead of Doug Brenner.

  I look up to see Cassie walking toward us.

  “Are you all right?” Cassie says to me as she looks down at Doug who just sat on a folding chair next to the ferns. Cassie must have heard from Aunt Ruth already that Doug and I are having problems.

  Doug scoots his chair back into the leaves.

  Cassie wears glasses and she pushes them farther up on her nose. She has her hair pulled back with one of those new glitzy clips. She decides to ignore Doug and focus on me. “We should call my cousin Bobby. He can just explain to his wife that he owes me a favor that he didn’t get a chance to do before he got married. I’ll bet she’d understand if he comes down.”

  “Would you understand if your husband decided to go on a date less than a week after you married him?”

  “Well, no, I guess not.”

  “Besides, there’s no plane that would get him here fast enough. I should have hired an actor to be my date.”

  “You were going to hire someone?” Doug lifts his head up. I notice some of his color has come back. “How much were you going to pay?”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” I say to Doug. “If I had hired an actor, I would have expected some acting.”

  I would have at least expected him not to faint when my aunt asked a simple question.

  “You don’t need an actor to pretend to be your date,” Cassie says loyally. She looks Doug in the eye. “Any man should be happy to be your date—it’s a privilege, not some dreaded commitment hanging around your neck.”

  Doug swallows nervously and then stands up. “I think I’ll go outside and check my cell phone—maybe I…ah…got a message from work.” Doug glances over at me with a tight-lipped smile. “If they need me at the hospital, maybe…ah…you were going to ride back with Cassie anyway, weren’t you?”

  I smile right back at him. And, I don’t show any teeth, either.

  The coward. He doesn’t even wait for me to finish my smile before he slinks away. Unless I miss my guess, he’ll pile one of those little paper plates high with some of those crab-stuffed mushrooms that have just arrived and then head out to his car. I doubt he even looks at his cell phone. I would have expected more fortitude from a man who wanted to plunge into ice water.

  “You’re still good with me getting a ride home with you?” I ask Cassie.

  “Of course.”

  Going home with Cassie makes sense anyway. I’ve been staying with her in her apartment in Hollywood ever since I got laid off from my job at the bank in Blythe six weeks ago. Outside of Aunt Inga, the one person I can always count on in my life is Cassie. I thought she was my cousin when I first met her. The whole town of Blythe, or as much of it as I knew in my five-year-old world, seemed to be related to me so I just assumed she was, too. I was really quite pleased when I discovered she wasn’t a cousin, but was prepared to be my friend instead.

  My cousins weren’t always that nice to me.

  My mother explained to me that the reason my cousins weren’t always nice to me was because I’m a black sheep. Being a black sheep is hereditary in our part of the family, she told me. Just the way she said it made me feel important. I was fine with being a black sheep if it made me more like my mother.

  My mother said that she was the original black sheep. She was born to that role simply because she had a different mother than the aunts. My grandfather married my grandmother ten years after his first wife, the aunts’ mother, had died.

  The aunts’ parents had both emigrated from Norway and the aunts thought that, if their father did remarry, it would be to an older Norwegian woman like their mother. They never expected him to marry a young beautiful American woman like my grandmother.

  To make it even worse, my grandmother didn’t know how to cook anything, let alone anything Norwegian. She’d never heard of lefse or lamb and cabbage stew or any of the foods that the aunts’ mother had cooked. She didn’t know how to darn a sock. Or kill potato bugs. I’m sure the aunts could give you the complete list of what she couldn’t do.

  What my grandmother could do was wear a scarf in a hundred ways and she had a hatbox filled with sheer floating scarves. If the aunts saw anyone dress up, it was on a Sunday. They were shocked when my grandmother wore her scarves every day of the week, but my grandmother said a woman needed to live her life with flair.

  I’ve often wondered what my mother’s life would have been like if my grandmother hadn’t died when my mother was nine years old. The aunts raised my mother after that. The aunts took good care of my mother even if my mother said that Aunt Ruth was forever calling her a half sister. It made my mother feel as though she was halfway in the family and halfway out of it. She didn’t like it.

  My mother was seventeen when she met my father. She left high school and married him a few months after meeting him. My mother had seven years with my father and then he died, too.

  When that happened, my mother told me later that she hadn’t known what to do so she went to Aunt Ruth. My mother had never held a job in her life and Aunt Ruth told her she’d never find a job, either, because, as Aunt Ruth apparently saw it, my mother was just like my grandmother and so it was pointless to expect her to know how to do anything useful.

  Before my mother could say anything, Aunt Ruth said that fortunately my mother didn’t need to worry, because she—Aunt Ruth—knew her Christian duty and would take care of my mother just as she’d taken care of my grandmother before her. That’s when Aunt Ruth offered my mother a job cleaning her house.

  If Aunt Ruth had said she was doing it because my mother was her sister, my mother might have taken the job. But Aunt Ruth said she was doing it because my mother was her half sister.

  My mother said she didn’t need a charity job.

  Then Aunt Ruth said that my mother shouldn’t be foolish. The only job my mother could even get without a high school diploma, according to Aunt Ruth, would have to be a charity job and, if my mother was going to be so picky, she could just go ahead and starve because she wasn’t likely to get another offer of employment.

  My mother said she’d rather starve than work for Aunt Ruth. Well, you can imagine the rest. From what I’ve heard, by the time the argument was over, my mother was stomping out of Aunt Ruth’s house leaving me with Aunt Inga. Aunt Inga is the oldest of my three aunts and the only one who is unmarried and, except for me, childless. Two days later my mother sent word that she’d gotten a job as a hatcheck girl in a casino in Las Vegas. She also said she still needed a little time to get settled before she took me to live with her.

  Aunt G
ladys, my third aunt, said my mother got that job just to spite my Aunt Ruth and they all expected my mother to give it up after a few weeks when she’d made her point. But I knew my mother wouldn’t be giving it up. A hatcheck girl might not make a lot of money, but at least she didn’t have someone reminding her she wasn’t really part of the family all the time.

  My mother eventually became a dealer in Las Vegas. When I was young, Aunt Inga used to take me to visit my mother around Mother’s Day every year. We’d spend the night at one of the small hotels off The Strip and we’d have dinner and breakfast with my mother. Now, I am perfectly able to make the trip by myself, but I still like having Aunt Inga come along, so we both drive up to see my mother for that one weekend. My mother drives down to visit us some, too, but that one visit is a constant.

  I sort of understood back then why my mother had to leave rather than let Aunt Ruth make her feel like a charity case. I didn’t understand, however, why my mother couldn’t take me with her. I was only five, but I was on my mother’s side. She and I were both black sheep together. I believed she wouldn’t leave me alone for long in Blythe. She couldn’t. I was no more fully part of the family there than she was. I belonged with my mother. I only half belonged with the others.

  Every night, after my mother had left, I got down on my knees beside my bed and prayed that God would make my mother come back soon and take me to live with her. At first, my prayers were very calm and ordinary. I managed to pray for a puppy in the same prayers. I really didn’t even think I needed to pray. I figured my mother would be back at Aunt Inga’s doorstep soon enough anyway with an open car trunk just ready for the suitcase I kept half-packed in the closet.

  I wasn’t asking God for a miracle in those days as much as I was just asking Him to help nudge everything along a little faster so that I would be settled in my mother’s home when He chose to send me that puppy I had also been praying for.

  As the years passed, however, I forgot all about the puppy and my prayer to live with my mother became more intense until finally it felt as if I was praying for the biggest miracle in the world. I screwed up my face and prayed as hard as I could, hoping God would notice and have mercy on me. He had to see my desire. I had certainly told Him what I wanted. I repeated my request over and over and over again.

  Finally, I realized no one was going to answer my prayer. Just like that. One day, sitting in church with Aunt Inga, I knew it was pointless to continue. I was about nine years old and I had been praying that same prayer for years. Nothing had ever happened.

  It became clear to me that day that God simply didn’t care enough to answer my prayer, even though He seemed to listen to the prayers of other people and I had no doubt He heard me, too. I mean He wasn’t deaf, so He had to have heard all those prayers I’d said. No, He just wasn’t bothering to answer me. Somehow, I wasn’t important enough to Him. Maybe I was a half and not a whole with him, too.

  These days, I don’t talk about my mother much and no one else in the family, except Aunt Inga, talks about her at all. It’s one of those Delicate Subjects that we don’t discuss. Like the fact that Uncle Howard is becoming bald and that the doctor says he’s under too much stress.

  Cassie says that, with all the silence about my mother, I might as well be adopted as she is. It’s funny. Back in the days when I believed my mother was going to come back for me, both Cassie and I thought I was the lucky one because I had a real mother. These days, I’m not sure who had it easier.

  Those first years, whenever Aunt Inga took me to Las Vegas to see my mother, I would ask my mother when I was going to live with her. At first, my mother would give me a hug and tell me she just needed a little more time to get a place that was big enough for both of us. Eventually, one year when I asked, she couldn’t look me in the eye and didn’t offer me a hug. I didn’t give up hope quite then, but it wasn’t long after that when I sat in church that day and gave up praying. I had finally figured out there was going to be no happy ending to the story of my mother and me.

  But that’s all history. I have enough problems right here and now to keep me busy without worrying about the cosmic problems of relating to a God who is silent and a mother who has no room in her life for a daughter.

  “I don’t suppose Elaine and what’s-his-name will break up again and call everything off,” I say as I take a long look around the party. “That way I wouldn’t need to worry about having a date for the wedding.”

  I am already regretting Doug’s leaving. I don’t know Doug well, but I know him better than any other guy I’ve met in Hollywood. I’d counted on him to be my date for the rehearsal dinner and the wedding, too.

  “You don’t need a date for Elaine’s wedding,” Cassie says.

  I blink at Cassie. “Of course, I do. I took a vow. You remember.”

  “I’d be surprised if Elaine even remembers the doctor part of it, though,” Cassie says.

  “Oh, she remembers,” I say.

  Elaine had reminded me of my vow in the invitation she sent to her engagement party. Her exact words were “dated any doctors lately?” She’d scrawled it right over the embossed black lettering saying what a fine hotel the Grand Carlton was and what a lovely party it would be.

  “But that was years ago. What were we—ten at the time?”

  “We were eleven. But it doesn’t matter. A vow never expires.”

  Especially not when it has been vowed in front of my cousin Elaine.

  It had all started with a pair of black high-heel shoes my mother left behind on one of her visits to Blythe. My mother said I could keep the shoes and, when I strapped them on my feet, I felt grown-up and incredibly tall. Aunt Inga fretted when I wore those shoes, but she didn’t have the heart to take them away from me. She knew how much I missed my mother; I guess she didn’t want me to miss those shoes, too.

  One Saturday, when Aunt Inga was busy doing something else, I decided to walk down to the grocery store with my high heels on and get some eggs. Instead of eggs, I got Elaine.

  When Elaine saw me in those shoes, I could see right away she was jealous. Aunt Ruth had gotten her a pair of short, stubby trainer heels, but Elaine was a long way from getting real high-heel shoes.

  “You can’t wear those,” Elaine said. “You’ll fall and hurt your insides and not be able to have babies.”

  “I’m going to have babies,” I had told her as I picked up a carton of eggs off the shelf.

  “You’ll probably never get married, either,” Elaine added calmly once she had my attention.

  “I will so.” I started walking to the counter to pay for the eggs. By this time in my life, I had learned to ignore Elaine’s taunts most of the time.

  But then Elaine said something I thought was forbidden. She said my problem was that only the saints and a few special mothers could tolerate my red hair. If my mother didn’t want me or my hair with her in Las Vegas, why would I think any man would want me around when I was grown-up?

  I had bright, unruly carrot hair. Somehow the hair didn’t bother me as much as Elaine always thought it should. I couldn’t believe, though, that Elaine had said anything about my mother not wanting me with her. That was supposed to be one of those things that the family didn’t talk about, at least not in a public place like the grocery store. We might have our problems with all the half sister and half cousin stuff, but we kept them to ourselves.

  Anyway, that’s when I had made my vow.

  “You just watch and see,” I had said. I must have crossed my heart and hoped to die, I was that determined. “I’m not just going to get married—I’m going to marry a doctor. And I’m going to do it before you get married, too!”

  It had been a foolish vow, but I never took it back. Even now I’d rather eat worms than give Elaine the satisfaction of seeing me admit defeat. When she was giving me the eye a minute ago, she looked happier than when her fiancé got up in front of everyone here and announced their engagement.

  Which might be a surprise to someo
ne else, but not to me. Elaine has enjoyed making my life miserable all our lives. And not just because she is beautiful and I am not. Oh, no, it goes far deeper than that. It goes all the way down to clothes.

  When I was growing up, I was always well dressed. That’s because I got all of Elaine’s hand-me-downs. Uncle Howard is a doctor and that has made Aunt Ruth, in her own words, “the richest woman in Blythe.” When my mother refused the job as Aunt Ruth’s housekeeper, my aunt Inga asked to take it instead. One of the job perks was that Aunt Ruth gave all of Elaine’s old clothes to Aunt Inga so she could give them to me to wear.

  You’d think from the way Aunt Ruth gave the clothes to Aunt Inga that they had come off of the back of some royal princess instead of Elaine’s scrawny back. I’d rather have worn Aunt Inga’s old bathrobe to school than Elaine’s charity clothes. But Aunt Inga was so proud when she gave me the clothes that I couldn’t refuse to wear them.

  The creepy thing was that whenever I was walking around in Elaine’s clothes I felt as if I was trying to be someone I wasn’t. As if I was a peasant pretending to be a princess. I think Elaine felt the same way only it was easier for her because she always got to be the princess in the story.

  The whole thing with the clothes never should have been possible in the first place. That’s because I am older than Elaine by five months. Older kids are supposed to be taller. Elaine’s hand-me-downs should be too small for me. It just shouldn’t work.

  Unfortunately, I have always been three inches shorter than Elaine so her old clothes always fit me just when they no longer fit her.

  I hate being shorter than Elaine. I used to think that shortness was one of the old Biblical plagues like pestilence and famine. I know now that my theology was a little misplaced, but back then I figured God’s punishment on me was to keep me short enough for Elaine’s hand-me-downs. I figured He knew I was mad at Him and He was dealing with me in His Own Way. I couldn’t even say much about it without looking like a whiner—if He had sent me boils or the palsy than I might have gotten some sympathy. But my shortness looked deceptively ordinary.