The Best Man

by Richard Peck

  It was mostly a dancing party. Tin Man and Scarecrow swooped around like they do in front of the tree at Christmas. And the Lincolns, together again. And here’s a sight burned into my brain for all time: Grandma Glinda Good Witch doing a two-step with Bo Peep.

  A gong sounded from high in the house. We all headed for the front hall. A consular servant in a powdered wig stood halfway up the stairs. “Ladies and gentlemen, pray silence for the entrance of your hostess, Lady Christobel, as Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt and Serpent of the Nile, with all her retinue.”

  Another gong, and there was Lady Christobel at the top of the stairs with eyes like Esther’s and a cobra crown. She was covered with jewels that looked real and held up a fake snake that looked way too real.

  “There’s Mummy with her asp in a basket!” piped Tiny Tim at the top of his little lungs.

  Everybody cheered. After all, she looked every inch a queen, but then she’s ninety-first in line. She nodded down pleasantly and waved her snake.

  A servant woman attended her, wafting a big feathered fan to keep off the flies of ancient Egypt. The servant woman wasn’t bad either, with bracelets up her arms and a wig cut low across her painted eyes. She made several Egyptian gestures.

  “Who is it?” I muttered to Mary Poppins.

  “I only know because I saw her getting made up,” Mary Poppins said.

  “Who?”

  “Guess.”

  But I couldn’t.

  Cleopatra and her retinue started down the stairs. Her throne was borne aloft by two gigantic Egyptian strongmen. Their costumes were skimpy. I mean skimpy. And the thongs on their sandals wound up to their massive knees. Their headdresses were higher than the feathered fan. I looked again, and one of them was Reginald. I looked one more time, and the other one was Andy. Westside Elementary’s Andy, the guard who faints at needles. He seemed to be okay with Cleopatra’s asp.

  Down the curving stairs they carried Cleopatra into the midst of her loyal subjects. At the bottom her ancient Egyptian muscle helped her off her throne, and her handmaiden dropped a final curtsy. Several people dropped curtsies just to be on the safe side. And I’ll say this about Lady Christobel as Cleopatra. She made a much better-looking woman than Lord Horace did.

  I finally saw up close who her handmaiden was. It was Ms. Roebuck.

  Later on, I caught another glimpse of Ms. Roebuck. She was on the dance floor, turning slowly in Reginald’s arms.

  “It could work,” said a voice near my velvet ear. “Reginald and Ms. Roebuck. Why not?” said Mary Poppins. “And by the way, I’m going back to Lynette. I was never really a Lynn. And ‘Lady Lynette’ sounds better.”

  “And you’ll be Lady Lynette because . . .”

  “I’ll be marrying Hilary.”

  “Does Hilary know?”

  “He’ll know when he needs to know,” said Mary Poppins.

  • • •

  There’s a cozy study off the living room, tucked under the curving stairs. It may have been Mr. Bob Showalter’s man cave. Now portraits hang in there of all the Harewood family members the Calthorpes have married.

  Tin Man sat on a sofa, looking into a fire snapping on the hearth. Cowardly Lion sat in a chair. Dorothy had danced Uncle Paul into the room, sharp in his dinner jacket.

  “What are you guys doing?” he said, settling on the sofa.

  “Taking a breather,” Cowardly Lion said. “This partying is hard work.”

  “Be glad you’re not Bo Peep,” Uncle Paul said. “He’s having to do it all in high heels.”

  “It’s a great party, though. Right?” I figured Uncle Paul had been to enough parties to know.

  “I can truly say I’ve never been to one like it,” he said, “and everybody’s here.”

  “Funny you should say that, Uncle Paul. I think Mr. McLeod’s here. I think I saw him.”

  Uncle Paul smacked his forehead. “Nooo,” he said.

  “I think it was him.” I scratched my patent-leather nose.

  “I’ll go out the back way,” Uncle Paul said, and elbowed Tin Man. “Hey, Tin Man, you ready to call it a night?”

  “How come you don’t even want to see Mr. McLeod?” Cowardly Lion asked.

  “Because I might weaken,” Uncle Paul said. “After all, I’m passing up the greatest guy I’ll ever meet, and I’m not going to feel like this about anybody else.”

  “Right,” said the lion. “And I’ve looked ahead—I’m beginning to do that. Lynette Stanley’s been doing it for years. Anyway, I’ve looked ahead, and you know what I see?”

  “I don’t,” Uncle Paul said. “And it’s a little hard to take you seriously since you look like a big stuffed toy.”

  “Well, do your best, Uncle Paul. Because Mr. McLeod’s going to be deployed, sooner or later. Right? The National Guard’s going to send him—”

  “Yes,” Uncle Paul said. “Get to the point, Lion.”

  “After it’s over, he’s going to need somebody to come home to. That’s the point.”

  Uncle Paul looked away from the fire.

  “And it ought to be you,” said the lion.

  Uncle Paul said, “Archer, don’t con—”

  “Yes, it ought to be you,” said Tin Man, and took off his head. It was Mr. McLeod.

  25

  Uncle Paul and Mr. McLeod were married on a Saturday that next June.

  Sixth grade was long over by then, even with the extra week of testing. Now we were twelve, or as Sienna Searcy said, virtually thirteen. Hilary had been out of his cast since Christmas, but Reginald was still providing muscle. And the high school let Holly attend graduation even though she’d blown up the chem lab. She was waitlisted for three colleges.

  One Friday I was up in Mom’s office. We were expecting Uncle Paul and Mr. McLeod for dinner. Garlic simmered up through the house. Dad was cooking. Things were fine. Then Holly blew in. She was wearing her CONFORMITY KILLS T-shirt. She and Janie Clarkson always wear them on the same day.

  She pointed me to the far end of the sofa and flopped down. She had a problem. “If there’s no bride in this wedding, how am I going to be bridesmaid? And I have to know like yesterday, because I’ll need a dress. And I can’t look thrown together.”

  “Honey,” Mom said.

  “Here’s how I see it,” Holly said. “If one of them proposed to the other, then the one proposed to is the bride, right?”

  “No,” Mom said. “Not right. Wrong, in so many ways, on so many levels.”

  Holly slumped. “So what kind of a wedding are we talking about here?”

  Mom searched the ceiling in that way of hers. “At first Paul and Ed were talking about just going to a municipal office in Chicago, tying the knot with a cleaning lady for witness, then cutting out for a weekend at Lake Geneva.”

  Holly fidgeted.

  “Then they were talking about booking Wrigley Field on an away day for the Cubs,” Mom said. “Then they talked about the arboretum. Now I don’t know what they’re going to do. But don’t worry about a dress, honey. You’re in luck. I was bridesmaid for Mrs. Stanley. Oh golly, when was it? Twenty years ago. And I’ve saved the dress. Sea-foam green with matching sash and a sweetheart neckline. I even have the shoes.”

  Holly gagged. She never gets Mom’s quirky humor.

  “I didn’t want to do this,” Holly said. “But you force my hand.” She stood, eyes closed. “I’ll have to take this problem to Grandma Magill.” Then she left, eyes shut all the way to the door.

  Silence fell behind her, and it felt good.

  “Grandma Magill?” I said. “Does Grandma even know there can be weddings without brides?”

  “I don’t know,” Mom said. “I just don’t know.”

  “I mean, it can get complicated,” I said. “Can there be a bachelor party when they’re both bachelors?”

&
nbsp; But Mom just sat at her desk with her eyes shut. It took me a while, but I finally saw she was being Holly.

  • • •

  Then we were all down in the kitchen. Dad was slicing roasted meat into a big pot of white beans. Uncle Paul was thickening some tomato sauce. Mr. McLeod was chopping onions. Mom was tossing a salad. It was fine—a nice evening.

  Then Grandma came in through the back door. She was in one of her League of Women Voters pantsuits. Holly followed.

  Grandma made straight for the stove. “Did you soak those white beans overnight?” she asked.

  “Yes, Mama,” Dad said.

  “Is that pork cooked through?” Grandma inquired.

  “It fell off the bone, Mama.”

  “And you didn’t add lamb, I hope. Your dad never liked lamb.”

  “Just a little hard Italian sausage,” Dad said.

  Dad was going to be cooking for another hour, but this isn’t about what we’d be eating that night.

  Grandma turned in the room.

  “Grandma, I’d like you to meet Mr. McLeod,” I said. She wouldn’t have met him at Lady Christobel’s party.

  “Mr. McLeod, this is my grandma, Mrs. Magill.”

  “How do you do, ma’am,” he said.

  “You’re quite a nice-looking young man, aren’t you?” Grandma observed.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Nobody ever tells me anything, so I have to rely on this girl for my information.” She pointed back at Holly. “And when you hear it from Holly, it’s all about Holly.”

  Even Holly had to agree with that.

  “As far as I can tell,” Grandma said past Uncle Paul, “you want to marry Paul Archer.”

  “I do,” Mr. McLeod said. “I mean, that’s my intention, ma’am.”

  Grandma looked over her glasses. “And what arrangements have you made for this event?”

  “We haven’t—”

  “What man could ever plan a wedding, let alone his own?” Grandma said. “You will have to leave the arrangements to me. I will enlist my friend Lucille Ridgley. She owes me one. It will be a very simple wedding. Just a gathering of friends. No fuss. It won’t even require a rehearsal. A porch wedding, as it’s summer. My porch.”

  The League of Women Voters had made Grandma their President for Life, and you can see why.

  “Another matter,” she said. “I do not know your spiritual beliefs, and don’t tell me. But I won’t have a Justice of the Peace conducting the ceremony. It will have to be—”

  “Me,” Dad said from the stove.

  We all looked. Grandma blinked.

  “I’m a registered Marriage Officiant. I went online, paid the fifteen bucks, and got ordained,” Dad said. “So I can marry them.”

  Dad looked at Uncle Paul and Mr. McLeod. “If that’s okay with you guys,” he said. “I can do the cake too.”

  It was okay with them, but surprising.

  And if Dad was going to officiate, did that move me up to best man? My heart kind of stopped. I looked at Uncle Paul and pointed to myself. He nodded.

  But wait. What about Mr. McLeod? Could I be his best man too, like double-duty? I looked at him and pointed to myself again. He nodded and turned up both thumbs.

  Grandma was getting ready to go.

  “Stay for dinner, Mama,” Dad said.

  “Dinner? With all I have to do?” she said. “The lists, the flowers, the music. Marjorie,” she called out to Mom, “you will need to take charge of the guest book and make sure everybody signs. It’s just such details as these that can make or break a wedding.”

  She was almost out the door. But she turned back. “I was married in a meadow, you know. Barefoot in a field of daisies, and I’d ironed my hair. I wore flowers in it. Real ones.”

  Then she was gone, out into the evening.

  • • •

  There wasn’t a bachelor party, but a mammoth reception was coming because a hundred and twenty-five chairs were unfolded on the lawn. Dad, who was officiating, was practically a dot in the distance. There aren’t any small weddings. There’s always fuss.

  We needed a battalion of ushers to get everybody sitting down: Mr. McLeod’s National Guardsmen and Uncle Paul’s Sigma Nu brothers.

  Up on the porch a string quartet was working through “You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings.”

  Just inside the front door at Grandma’s house we waited, the best man and the grooms.

  And Holly.

  Yes, Holly. It was just easier to let her be bridesmaid even though there wasn’t a bride. She waited at the front door ahead of us, fidgeting with a bunch of glads from Grandma’s garden.

  I told you about my suit—Ralph Lauren, right? Dark blue in a summer weight and a lot like Uncle Paul’s. Cuffed pants. We got matching ties. My tie was long on me, but I’ll get there.

  Mr. McLeod was in his dress uniform. Knife creases in his pants, shoes like mirrors, cap in the crook of his arm. Look at that haircut. And wait till the sunlight hits those brass buttons.

  Out on the porch the string quartet waited, holding their bows. As best man, I asked Uncle Paul and Mr. McLeod if they were ready, and they said they were. They were going to walk side by side, down the aisle to Dad. Two guys already together. And I’d come along behind.

  “Let’s do it,” I said, and told Holly to tell the quartet to hit it. She did, and they struck up “America the Beautiful” in march time. She pushed through the screen door and walked out across the porch.

  With her new dress she had on Dorothy’s slippers from the party last fall. At the top of the porch stairs she clicked her ruby heels and started down into the waiting crowd.

  She got her moment. She always does.

  Then we set off across the porch. “Wow,” said one of the string quartet.

  We took our time. It was a great, dappled day. Everybody’s phone was out. A flash or two came from the trees across the street. Lady Christobel was there in an English hat and with her the Hon. Hilary and Lord Horace. The anchorwoman of the ABC affiliate had crashed the party, but the ushers knew her from the evening news and let her stay. Everybody was there. All the troops, including Natalie Schuster.

  Dad kept getting bigger and closer behind a spray of flowers at his podium. He was wearing an old Palm Beach summer coat of Grandpa’s, and a tie. Nobody had ever seen him outdoors without a baseball cap before.

  We drew up.

  “Who gives this man to this man?” he asked, about Uncle Paul.

  “I do.” Mom stood up from the front row. “His sister.”

  “Okay. Thanks, honey,” Dad said. “Who gives this man to this man?” he asked, about Mr. McLeod.

  “I do,” said Mrs. Stanley, “his critic teacher.” She stood up from her seat between Mr. Stanley and Lynette.

  “So do I,” said Mrs. Velma Dempsey, rising out of a row farther back, “as principal of Westside Elementary.”

  “So do we,” said all the troops, standing up all over the lawn.

  Dad looked around to see if anybody else wanted to give Mr. McLeod away. Then he went on. I forget the order of things after that.

  Uncle Paul and Mr. McLeod exchanged rings. I told Uncle Paul I’d had to be ring bearer in the last wedding, and I couldn’t go through that again. They carried the rings in their own pockets.

  “Put that ring on that man’s hand,” Dad said, twice. Then he covered their hands with his. A pile of big hands.

  They exchanged vows. They promised to love and honor and not necessarily obey each other.

  Then by the powers vested in him by Cook County and the State of Illinois, Dad pronounced them married.

  “Be there together

  Through any weather,”

  he told them.

  “Though the world fall apart,

  Stand heart-t
o-heart.”

  And they said they would.

  “Repeat after me,” Dad said: “We believe in the Cubs and each other.”

  And they did.

  “You may kiss the groom,” Dad said. “You may kiss the groom.”

  26

  Like I said. There’s some cake left.

  The reception’s been such a great party that Grandma Magill’s porch is still a big throng of people. Lynette and Mr. and Mrs. Stanley just left. Lynette had scored a new outfit for the occasion. I didn’t understand it, but it really annoyed Natalie all the way across the porch.

  I guess Lynette and I have made some progress over these six years. We started our last wedding under the porch, not on it. Of course we were just kids then. And you know Lynette; she looks ahead, not back.

  Which brings up Hilary Evelyn. Reginald just came to pick up the three Calthorpes in a limo from the consulate. The limo’s just pulling away from the kerb.

  And the grooms have been gone twenty minutes. Everybody thought they’d blast off in Uncle Paul’s Audi. Instead, Dad pulled Mr. McLeod’s beat-up Kia around to the front of Grandma’s house, and they tooled away in that before anybody noticed. Dad had it worked out. Dad was there.

  I was willing to let them go. I’d done my best man duties, and I’d be seeing them for all the years to come. But they found me over in my corner of the porch. Uncle Paul handed me something. A little black velvet box, and inside it a pair of gold cuff links. Totally grown-up.

  “Are these for Dad?” I said. “Because he doesn’t—”

  “They’re for you. Best men get presents from the grooms,” Uncle Paul said. “Besides, you helped all this happen, man. You helped us happen.”

  Me?

  Man.

  Now I couldn’t see the box. It was blurry or something.

  I couldn’t see the box, but I could see me shooting my cuffs to show off my gold cuff links at all the big occasions of my life unfolding in the future.

  Now they were going. We made a pile of hands, the three of us, and their new rings gleamed bright as Mr. McLeod’s buttons.

  “One more thing,” he said. “No more Mr. McLeod. I’m your uncle now.”