I was just going off duty one day when I heard myself being paged: “Dr. Thornton, Dr. Thornton, line five, line five.” I picked up a phone and was told I was wanted at the front desk. In my whites and with my stethoscope around my neck, I went striding down the hall. From the distance I saw Daddy. He was standing with his head cocked, his eyes on a corner of the ceiling, a rapt expression on his face that I couldn’t read.
“Daddy! Has something happened to Mommy? Is she all right?”
“Your mother’s okay.” He still hadn’t looked at me. I followed his gaze to the far corner. He was staring at a loudspeaker for the paging system. “Could they do that again?”
“Do what?”
“Call your name.”
I went to a phone and asked the operator to repeat the page. As I walked back to Daddy, the words came over the system: “Dr. Thornton, Dr. Thornton….”
Daddy turned an ecstatic face to me. “Did you ever hear anything sound so great, Cookie?” He mimicked the paging system: “Dr. Thornton, Dr. Thornton…”
“Better than music from a horn, Daddy?” I teased.
“Oh, sweeter, much sweeter,” he murmured, “You’re Dr. Thornton. With a scripperscrap around your neck.”
“I could be a green monkey….”
“And still the richest man in the world would grab your hand and say, ‘Please help me, Doctor.’”
“I remember you saying that every time we drove around Asbury Park.”
“Was I right, Cookie?”
“You were right, Daddy.”
“Sometimes you’d want to give up—you’d get tired or the work was too hard—and I’d say, ‘Come on, Cookie, do it for Daddy.’ Remember that?”
“You said it often.”
He turned to me and took my hands. “Cookie, I wasn’t askin’ you to do it for me.”
“I know that now. It was for me, Daddy, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, Dr. Thornton, it was for you.”
12
Till Death Do Us Part
JUNE 8. JUNE 8. JUNE 8. A laborer digging the Panama Canal single-handedly couldn’t have worked any harder than I did that first year of my residency, hard and conscientiously and as creatively as I could, honing my skills as a physician. But running on a parallel track in my mind was the countdown to June 8, the day in 1974 when Shearwood and I were to be married at The Riverside Church—at 12:00 because the book on weddings said that formal weddings took place at high noon and I was determined to have a formal wedding, not one of those slipshod affairs, which is all I’d ever been to, where the bride is late, the minister is late, the guests are late, and the reception is punch and cookies in the church meeting room.
Two years earlier President Nixon’s daughters had been married in wedding gowns designed by Priscilla of Boston, which was recommendation enough to send me to that shop for my gown. I told the bridal consultant that I wanted a train like Maria’s in The Sound of Music, that is to say, about eighty feet long. “Impossible,” the designer said. “The longer the train, the wider it gets, and it would end by spreading over the whole church.” We compromised on the maximum feasible length for the train—detachable so I could dance at the reception—and a cathedral-length veil. I was doing some nervous eating and a lot of snacking because of the odd and long hours I was putting in at the hospital, which meant that every time I showed up for a fitting, the seams of the wedding dress had to be let out a little more, until finally a decree was issued that I was not to gain another ounce lest the sides split when I walked down the aisle.
In reconfirming the date for the nave, the church secretary asked how many people would be at the wedding. “About a hundred,” I told her, then rethought the figure. “No, probably about fifty.”
“Fifty? Then we have to reschedule you from the nave to the chapel. For the nave you have to have at least two hundred people. That huge space is really for, like, dignitaries’ daughters when lots of people have to be invited to the ceremony.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, thinking of my glorious train and the walk down that center aisle. “Let me get back to you. I haven’t checked my mother’s list yet.” An hour later I called her. “I sure was wrong,” I said cheerily. “There’ll be at least two hundred and fifty people. It turns out my mother has her heart set on inviting all her friends and my dad’s determined to invite everyone in his office, so it’s going to add up.”
Daddy didn’t have an office and Mommy didn’t have three friends to her name, but I was going to have two hundred and fifty people at my wedding if I had to sweep strangers in off the street. I planned to invite practically everyone I had ever known, including fellow students, interns, residents, doctors, and professors, and I told my relatives, all the aunts and uncles on both sides, to ask anyone they wanted to. Because it struck me as chintzy to invite people to witness a wedding without wining and dining them in return, all two hundred and fifty people were to be invited to the reception as well, which was to be held at the Tavern on the Green, a restaurant with a magical atmosphere on the edge of Central Park. I had made the reservation years before, at the same time I reserved the church, so there wouldn’t be any hitch. Except that there was. A letter arrived saying the restaurant was being closed down for six months for renovations and my deposit was being returned.
I was frantic. June weddings are myriad; the good places to have receptions were certain to be booked. I was bemoaning my luck loud and long when one of the hospital clerks interrupted to remark that she had attended a firemen’s ball the night before at a fabulous place. “Where?” I pounced.
“Terrace on the Park in Queens. You know that building left over from the World’s Fair? It’s got this fantastic restaurant on top.”
“Queens? I don’t even know where Queens is!”
“Dr. Thornton, let me tell you, if you’re looking for the perfect place, this is it. I promise. Go see it.”
I rented a car, found my way across the East River to Queens, got on Grand Central Parkway as directed, and in the distance saw a building in the shape of a T. “T for Thornton,” I said to myself. “Maybe it’s a good sign.” The restaurant was in the crossbar of the T and had a spectacular view of the New York skyline. The banquet manager described a band playing, hors d’oeuvres circulating, an open bar, then a set of doors folding back to reveal a sit-down, prime rib, champagne dinner for two hundred and fifty.
“That’s it!” I said. “Do it all. Everything but the band. That I want to choose myself.” At the headquarters of Local 802 in the city, I listened to tapes, picking out several bands that sounded first-rate but finally settling on the Steven Scott orchestra because I was assured that it had played at the society wedding of an elegant, much-written-about debutante earlier in the season. I used the same reasoning to choose a wedding photographer, settling on one who had pictures of Jackie Kennedy all over his studio.
Shearwood said, “The way you’re going, Yvonne, all I have to do is, like, show up, right?”
“Right,” I laughed. “And if you don’t show up after all this, let me tell you, Shearwood McClelland, you are dead meat.”
The wedding book alerted me to the fact that having the organ burst into “Here Comes the Bride” was passé, gauche even, news which I passed on to the choirmaster at the church and asked if he could suggest a substitute. “Well, at Queen Elizabeth’s wedding they played the “Trumpet Voluntary.”
“That’s good enough for me! That’s what it’ll be.”
After I bought a record to hear what it sounded like, I went back to Local 802 and interviewed trumpet players, making each one play for me “because there’s a high note I don’t want you to mess up on.” I ended by hiring not one but several players: the Festival Brass Players of New York. They were in addition to the Riverside organist and the full church choir. The wife of the minister who was to perform the wedding ceremony was a member of the choir and told me later that her fellow singers kept saying at rehearsals, “Who are these people?” All they
knew was that the music, all of which I selected, was for the wedding of Drs. Thornton and McClelland, and they kept speculating, “Boy, they must really be somebody.”
Because the maid of honor has various responsibilities and Linda’s time was taken up with dental school, she asked to trade roles with Rita and be one of the bridesmaids while Rita became maid of honor. The book said that for a formal wedding there had to be at least five bridal attendants, which was fine; I had five sisters. But again there was a hitch: Jeanette kept not showing up for a fitting of her dress.
I called her on a weekend when I was down in Long Branch. “Jeanette, come on, you’ve got to give me a time when you can come to New York.”
“I can’t make it.”
“What do you mean, you can’t make it? It’s already April. The wedding’s in June. We’re running out of time here.”
“I can’t make the wedding. I have the flu.”
“For two months! You aren’t going to make my wedding because you’re having the flu for two months?” I was steaming, but my eye was caught by Daddy shaking his head at me. I took a deep breath, said as calmly as I could, “Okay, Jeanette,” and hung up.
“One monkey don’t stop the show, Cookie,” Daddy reminded me. “There’s other people.”
That was the trouble; there weren’t other people. As it was for my mother and father, my life had been the family and work. I hadn’t had time for friends. I asked Rita to get someone she knew to be a bridesmaid, and as it turned out, she had to produce two of her friends for me because Donna worried that she might possibly have an epileptic seizure during the ceremony and spoil my wedding.
Shearwood had seven groomsmen—the book said they weren’t to be called ushers anymore—and he had written vows that he would pronounce during the ceremony, as had I. The night before the wedding, the wedding party was at the Holiday Inn across from Roosevelt Hospital. “Shearwood, have you memorized your vows?”
“Don’t worry, Yvonne, I’ll get to it.”
“If you mess up, I’m going to be awfully upset.”
“I won’t mess up.”
“Maybe you’d better read them to me.” I wanted to make sure all the grammar was right and proper. ‘“Yvonne, you don’t have to review my vows. I’ll tell them to you in the church.”
“Everything’s got to be perfect!” I wailed.
Afterward people commented on how nice it was that we had written our own vows rather than just echoing the minister. The book had suggested it, but with the caveat that most people were too nervous to pull it off. We managed fine, with just one little glitch that I can hear on the tape we have of the ceremony. I smile now when I play the tape and hear how earnest and sweet we sounded.
Something old—a diamond and sapphire pinky ring Daddy had given me when I graduated from Monmouth College. Something new—my wedding gown and a heart-shaped diamond necklace. Something borrowed—hosiery from Rita. Something blue—a blue satin and lace garter. With a sixpence in her shoe— a real sixpence given to me by Ed Leahey, my P & S classmate.
At 11:55 on June 8, the organ was playing, 250 guests were assembled in the church, the limousines were waiting outside to transport everyone to Queens, I and my bridesmaids carrying our wedding bouquets were in place at the back of the nave ready to walk down the aisle. There was only one thing wrong: Daddy hadn’t appeared.
I’d told him repeatedly that this wedding was not going to be on CPT. I was in a state. “Rita, go out there. Get Uncle Kenny. Get somebody! In three minutes they’re going to play the “Trumpet Voluntary” and I’m walking down the aisle if I have to walk alone!”
“Okay Yvonne, but stop crying. Your mascara’s running.”
At two minutes of twelve, Daddy came through the door. I greeted him hysterically. “Daddy, can’t you even be on time for my wedding!”
“You’re not married yet, are you?” He looked handsome in a silk Hickey Freeman suit—he had drawn the line at wearing a morning coat. The “Trumpet Voluntary” sounded. “Ready, Cookie?”
I took a deep breath to get my heart back in my chest and laid my hand on his arm. “Ready, Daddy.”
Scarcely thirty minutes later it was over. Reverend Dr. Robert L. Polk pronounced us man and wife. Shearwood and I were married. I said to myself as he and I walked back down the aisle together: “Three years of preparation and already it’s over? It can’t be!”
But it was, and it had been perfect, an elegant wedding the wedding of my dreams.
“‘You’re Cecil B. DeMille,” Linda whispered. “I was expecting doves.” “I was thinking of doves,” I admitted, “but I was worried they wouldn’t be housebroken.”
I’d wanted something out of the ordinary for Shearwood and me to travel to the reception in, and when I’d seen an ad that urged, “Have your wedding in a Rolls-Royce,” I knew that was the answer and had taken myself off to the Rolls-Royce agency.
“You’ll never regret it,” the salesman said.
“Right. Where’s the car? I want to see it.”
“It’s being used in the filming of The Great Gatsby, but I promise you, it’s white, it’s elegant, it’s big.”
In front of the church it was white, elegant, and big. It also had a prominent dent in the front fender, which came close to ruining my wedding, except that, as we were driven across Manhattan on 125th Street, little kids stopped playing and ran to the curb to watch the sleek Rolls glide by and I waved graciously, benevolently, charmingly—queen for a day.
Even all these years later, one of the doctors who was at the reception introduces me to people by saying, “You should have been at her wedding. Best wedding I ever went to.” As one of the residents described it, “The waiters were coming in with these big platters of hors d’oeuvres, and the plates they gave us to put them on were so huge that I figured this was it and I’m just going to tank up on all this great food. Then they opened up the doors for the real dinner! I couldn’t believe it!”
Every wedding I’d ever been to had been done on the cheap. Not mine, I was determined about that. “Give them as much as they can eat and drink,” I had told the caterers, “and then offer them more.” I had no chance to eat and drink myself: I was too excited and I was too busy. First it was the picture-taking, which went on and on in various permutations and combinations: bride and groom, bride and groom and attendants, bride and parents, groom and brother, bride and sisters. Jeanette walked into the reception dressed in a brashly colored dashiki, hair cut in an Afro, and Mommy wanted her to be in the picture of the bridal party.
“Mommy,” I objected, “she wasn’t in the bridal party. She didn’t want to be.”
“She’s your sister.”
“She’s dressed Nairobi out of Kenya and I’m dressed Priscilla of Boston.”
“She’s your own sister.”
“All right, so we’ll have a family portrait, you and Daddy and the six of us.”
The most charming of all the wedding pictures was one of the flower girl and the ring bearer. The book had said the children should be about five years old, so when I began planning the wedding so long in advance, I asked Aunt Dollbaby Joy, who had eight or nine kids, if she would lend me the two youngest, who would be the right age at the time of the wedding, and I would see to their outfitting.
“Okay, that’s wonderful, Yvonne,” she said two years before the wedding. Two weeks before the wedding, she said, “I can’t come, Yvonne, and I can’t allow my children to come because we’re Jehovah’s Witnesses now.”
My flower girl scattering rose petals. My ring bearer with the little satin pillow. “Mommy, Mommy, Aunt Joy’s screwed me up!”
Daddy said, “Cookie, what did I tell you? These people are gonna come up lame. They’re not dependable.”
Uncle Kenny’s wife, the only aunt that I remembered being kind to Mommy, volunteered her daughter, Kendra. The little girl was only three and I was afraid she would cry and mess up my wedding, but Aunt Thalia promised she wouldn’t and offered to mak
e her dress herself. Now I had the flower girl, and Mommy often babysat for a little boy named Ryan who was as cute as a shiny button, so she asked his mother if we could borrow him. Both children carried off their roles beautifully, and when the photographer took their picture, she in her frilly dress and he in his little white tuxedo, they looked heartbreakingly innocent. Weeks later, when I stopped by the photography studio, their portrait had joined Jackie Kennedy’s on the wall.
After the picture-taking, Shearwood and I went around to all the tables and thanked the guests for coming because the book said that was the gracious and proper thing to do. We carried our glasses of champagne and picked up an hors d’oeuvre here and there, but we never sat down to dinner because when we weren’t laughing and chatting with our guests, we were dancing—first Shearwood and I, then Daddy and I. It was the first time Daddy and I had danced because always before we were the band making the music, not the people swinging to it. “Your daddy was a dancing fool,” his sister had said, and she was right. Even all these years later, Daddy moved to the music like water taking on the shape of a glass.
Because Shearwood and I weren’t leaving on our honeymoon until the next day, we had made a reservation for our wedding night at The Plaza Hotel on Central Park South. When we arrived at the bridal suite, there on the door was a brass plate and engraved on it was: Dr. and Mrs. Shearwood McClelland. We were thrilled. After a late dinner in the Oak Room downstairs, we returned to the elegant bridal suite and collapsed into bed. Other people say of their wedding night, “Oh, it was so wonderful.” All Shearwood and I can say is, “Oh, we were so exhausted.” In the morning our exchange went like this:
The Ditchdigger's Daughters Page 21
