At Weddings and Wakes

by Alice McDermott

  The girls saw their brother hesitate before he said, “Yeah,” and so were certain that this part, anyway, was a lie.

  Rosemary took the glass from her brother’s hand and sniffed it. It was nearly empty. “You’re dreaming,” she said. She took a sip. “It’s just soda.”

  “It’s bourbon, I’m telling you,” he said. “I’m already getting a buzz.”

  Their brother looked cautiously at the two girls—he was never very good at mischief—and then grinned and took another sip of his own. Rosemary rolled her eyes. “That’s just what this family needs,” she said, her eyelids dropping with disdain. “Another alcoholic.”

  She turned on her heels and without a thought the two girls quickly followed her over to a small table in the corner where rows of pale place cards were lined up like dominoes. Rosemary plucked her name from among them, Miss Rosemary Towne, in Aunt Agnes’s fine hand, and then the two girls, delighted, found their own.

  “We’re all at the same table,” their cousin told them. “The kids’ table I guess.”

  But there were adults settling there as well. A Mrs. Hynes and her husband, who said she’d grown up with their mother and her sisters—“I’m sure they’ve mentioned me, Margy Delahey”—transforming the impish child from their mother’s stories into a permed and perfumed grown woman. A youngish couple with dark skin and heavy accents, neighbors of Fred’s. A single man with a round bald head, Fred’s second cousin, he told them, joining, the children thought, the endless number of cousins who had filled the room. The table before them was set with a wealth of silverware and crystal and at the head of each gold-rimmed plate there was a pretty net bag filled with pastel almonds and tied with a white ribbon. Other guests had begun to find their seats. “They’re here,” Fred’s cousin whispered to the table as all across the room the noise and the laughter began to quiet down. All three musicians began to play now as their mother and Mr. Sheehy appeared at the double doors. There was a round of applause as they crossed the dance floor together and took their seats at the head table, where Momma and Uncle John, their father and the priest who had said the Mass already sat. And then Aunt May and Fred appeared and everyone in the room stood to cheer, as if, it seemed to the children, they had all gotten word that something fabulous had occurred to the pair of them in the hour of their absence.

  Aunt May’s face was bright red as she crossed the dance floor but Fred grinned and waved and, just as they reached the head table, turned his bride around and took her into his arms. Surprisingly for the children, the man with the trumpet began to sing in a soft and foggy voice.

  You are the promised kiss of springtime

  That makes the lonely winter seem long …

  Fred was a dancer, a natural, even the children saw it. He was light-footed, elegant in all his movements, and although Aunt May was not—they could see that, too—by the song’s second verse she was gliding rather smoothly, carefully following his lead but shed, too, of her initial self-consciousness. It seemed a revelation: that two such subdued and cautious people could transform themselves in this way, could hold each other so closely and yet move with such grace, hand to waist, hand to shoulder, the other two hands held high. Fred did not clasp Aunt May’s hand in his as the children had seen other dancers do. No, he kept his fingers out, his palm open, and she draped her own thin hand between his thumb and forefinger, as if they needed only the gentlest touch to hold them fast. The dearest things I know, are what you are.

  Mrs. Hynes at their table, their mother’s childhood friend, sighed heavily and wiped a tear from her eye, but no one else in the room made a sound. On the dance floor, May and Fred gracefully parted, their hands still joined, took a few steps side by side and then moved into each other’s arms again.

  Someday, my happy arms will hold you, and someday …

  His pants leg touched her pale skirt. His cheek touched her forehead. May closed her eyes and it was clear to the children, at least, that something indeed had happened in that hour since they’d left the church together. A consummation of sorts that had made them clearly husband and wife, made them so firmly husband and wife that it seemed for the moment that they could no longer be aunt, sister, stepdaughter, stranger, mailman, as well. They had shed, in the past hour, or perhaps only in the time since they entered this perfectly lit, hourless, seasonless place, everything about themselves but one another.

  There was another round of applause as the song ended (Fred turning her once, twice, and then finishing the dance with a delicate, debonair dip) and the two of them kissed and went to their places at the table. Now the waiters who had paused to watch the dance scurried through to pour champagne, putting just a mouthful into each child’s glass, which was enough anyway to make Patrick roll his eyes as if to say this was just what he needed.

  At the head table the best man stood and waved a rectangular magazine clipping in his hand to quiet the guests once more. He raised his champagne glass, turned to the bride and groom, and was just about to speak when the glass disappeared. There was a tiny, tinkling crash. Fred pulled back his chair, Aunt May put her hand to her breast, and the best man looked with astonishment at his empty hand. Patrick said, “Oops” and across the dance floor the two Miss McGowans made the sign of the cross over their gray dresses.

  “Sorry, folks,” the best man said as the waiters rushed forward. “Must be nerves.” And everyone laughed consolingly, someone among them shouting, “It’s good luck—like the Jews do.” “Yes,” Mrs. Hynes said to everyone at their table, “They always break a glass, don’t they?” And the Cuban couple, Mr. and Mrs. Castro themselves, nodded vigorously, yes, yes.

  Another glass was brought and filled and the man said, “Let’s try that again.” Once more the guests quieted. “Fred and May,” he said and then looked at the clipping in his trembling hand. “May the road rise up to meet you,” he read, squinting a little, moving the paper closer and then farther away, “May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind always be at your back, and the sunshine warm on your face. And may you be in heaven ten minutes before the devil knows you’re dead.”

  This drew a great laugh from the wedding guests, many of whom nodded to indicate that they had heard it before.

  “That’s an old Irish blessing,” the best man explained, slipping the paper into his suit pocket. Mrs. Hynes said to the table, “Oh, sure,” although the children could see by the disdainful look on Momma’s face that given the chance she would deny it: say, as she said of most such things, “I never heard of it until I got over here,” as if all such claims to Irish wit or lyricism were mere American hoax. “Which seemed appropriate to use today,” the best man went on, “since Fred and I are a couple of old Irishmen.” Another good laugh from the crowd and Momma clearly thinking, “Half Swede,” as the children had already heard her say from her chair in the dining room. “But now here’s a new one, too,” he continued, growing comfortable in his role, “from all of us, to you.” He raised the glass, gripping it carefully. “Fred and May, your best days are all ahead of you. God bless you in them. Good luck.” And all the wedding guests touched glasses and called good luck and drank their champagne, which struck the two girls as bitter, although their cousin Patrick drank his down in one gulp and then smacked his lips as if it had been peach nectar, their brother laughing delightedly at this, enchanted.

  Mrs. Hynes suddenly picked up her fork and began pinging her water glass. Slowly, the other guests followed. “It means they’re supposed to kiss,” Rosemary explained to the two girls above the din, which seemed a milder, more subdued version of the car horns. Fred and May leaned together, there was more cheering, and then the waiters began to distribute the fruit cup.

  It was a long, slow meal and between courses the wedding guests got up to dance, Fred taking a turn with each of the women, May with the men. Their father danced silently with their mother and then each of the girls, then Agnes, Veronica, and May. Just as the dinner plates were cleared away, Uncle John appeared at
their table to take his daughter’s hand. He looked over her head through the whole song. She stared into his broad shoulder.

  Mrs. Hynes told Rosemary when she returned that her father had been some killer-diller when he was young. “Handsome?” she said, drawing the word out to show that, no matter how she stretched it, it could not begin to cover her meaning. “I’ll say.”

  Rosemary smiled politely. She might never have met the man.

  “And your father,” she said to the girls, leaning over the table even as her silent husband leaned back and said across her back, to Fred’s balding cousin in the next chair, “Memory Lane here.” “When your mother started going with your father, I said, ‘Well, there are two kids just out to have some fun.’ They’d walk by my house on the way to the subway, always laughing. I’d always call to them: ‘Where this time?’ and they’d say Broadway, Coney Island, the Roxy Theater—never a dull moment with those two. I guess your father was at Fort Dix then, getting ready to go overseas. I mean, who didn’t want to have a good time in those days? You could have knocked me over with a feather when Lucy said she was getting married. The party girl? I said. The good-time kids? I can tell you, the neighborhood gossips had a field day.” Her husband looked at the children and then said, a kind of warning, “Now, Margy,” but she waved a hand. “Oh, they’re old enough. I’m sure they’ve heard it a million times before,” and then suddenly turned to Mrs. Castro to finish the story, lowering her voice just in case they were not. “And then what did it turn out to be? Ten, twelve years before the first baby came? Just goes to show you.”

  The band had been silent for a moment but now the piano began a soft, merry version of “Me and My Shadow.” “I’ve got to see this,” Fred’s cousin said as he stood and made his way toward the circle of people on the dance floor. All of them at the table got up to follow, Mrs. Hynes saying to Mrs. Castro, “He’s quite a dancer,” and Mrs. Castro saying, “We didn’t know.”

  In the middle of the circle Fred was tapping out a delicate, loose-jointed soft shoe, his fingers held out elegantly, his feet moving lightly, swiftly, over the polished floor. “Lessons when we were kids,” his cousin was saying. “Fred took to it, not me. He was in any number of shows, before the war. His mother was mad for Broadway, wanted him to be another Gene Kelly. But it’s been years since I’ve seen him dance. I was sure he’d given it up entirely.” As the music picked up, the drum and trumpet joining in, Fred’s steps became more complex, his arms windmilling as he jumped over his own arched instep, kicked his heels once, twice, three times, and then drove his tapping feet out behind him for a tremendous finale.

  The applause had barely started when the band broke into a wild jig and Fred, still breathless, hitched his pants legs and crooked his elbows and executed a series of light, lilting steps that the best man soon joined him in, and then, both of them waving her on, a shoeless woman broke from the crowd and danced along with the two of them. She was a plump woman in a narrow turquoise dress and her breasts seemed to move in one solid pair as she jumped—down toward her waist and up toward her chin—her short strand of pearls snapping above them. Then Aunt May was pushed out onto the floor and Mrs. Hynes pulled her husband. Then their mother and Veronica, doing the step dance they had learned in grammar school, then Agnes and another woman and, wonder of wonders, Aunt Agnes was also shoeless, her spine straighter and her hands stiffer at her side, her feet livelier than any of the others. Aunt Arlene found Rosemary as the other guests joined in and the four remaining cousins took what space was left on the floor to do their own swinging square dance, clapping and skipping and swinging each other wildly since they had never learned to do a jig.

  Then the musicians were playing a Mexican hat dance and Fred and May were once more left to the center, Fred kicking and spinning while Aunt May, her hands placed lightly on her hips, merely bent with laughter. Then “Hava nagila” and the circle they all had formed began to spin until with a whoop they raised their joined hands and rushed toward the bride and groom. Then the music changed again and they were doing the twist, then the cha-cha, the lindy. When the band returned to “Me and My Shadow” Fred once more took the center of the floor, this time on wobbling legs, repeating his initial steps but now shaking his head and touching his back, until the best man rushed in to pretend to help him out, and in a smooth bit of comedy that they just might have rehearsed, Fred let his knees buckle beneath him and Mr. Sheehy caught him under the arms and dragged him, grinning and waving, off the floor.

  There was wild applause—Patrick and their brother putting their fingers to their mouths to whistle shrilly—and Aunt May shook her head ruefully, like a wife, as she followed her husband to the table. All around the room, women fanned themselves and men loosened their ties. Husbands held their forearms close to their belts as wives leaned against them, slipping back into their shoes. There was a rush at the bar.

  After the cake was cut and the coffee was served and a tall silver dish beaded with cold was placed before each of them (“Strawberry parfait,” Mrs. Hynes said and then lifted her spoon and tapped its side, getting everyone else to do the same until May and Fred once more kissed), Uncle John rose from the head table and walked, a little unevenly, across the empty dance floor to the band. He had one hand in his pocket as he spoke to the trumpet player, who nodded and said, “Sure, sure,” and then leaned down to the piano player as Uncle John turned away and walked toward the round table where Aunt Arlene sat in her pink dress, her red lips poised at the end of a long parfait spoon. She raised her big blue eyes at the piano’s first note, laughed and shrugged and seemed to look apologetically all around before she returned the spoon to her plate and rose to take her husband’s hand.

  She followed behind him to the dance floor, her hand in his and his held behind his back as if she were a secret. Today in the summer of life, sweetheart, the trumpet player sang, you say you love only me. Gladly I’ll give my heart to you, throbbing with ecstasy.

  Uncle John was not the dancer Fred was but he held his wife far closer, bending into her as they moved together, pressing her soft stomach into his belt, one hand splayed across her back and the other, raised high, clenched over hers. His firm chin bowed into her shoulder. Even the children saw that there was something defiant in the way he danced. He might have been a teenager showing off his first girl. But last night I saw, while a-dreaming, the future, old and gray, and I wondered if you’ll love me then, dear, just as you do today.

  Slowly, other couples began to join them. Their mother and father. The best man and his plump wife. Mr. and Mrs. Hynes, the Castros, Fred’s bald cousin, who seemed to have struck up a friendship with a woman from the next table. The room grew quiet, even solemn, as if seriously to consider the words of the song, Will you love me in December as you do in May? Will you love me in the same old-fashioned way? When my hair has turned to gray, will you kiss me then and say, that you love me in December as you do in May?

  Still seated among the scattered tables were Momma and Veronica, Aunt Agnes, the McGowan sisters, a small man staring at the cigarette in his hand, the priest, and all of the children, who noticed, for the first time that afternoon, that the light had indeed begun to change.

  When the song ended Aunt Arlene stepped away from her husband and went straight to the table to retrieve her small beaded bag. She spent the next half hour on a chair in the ladies’ room, rolling up and smoothing out the damp handkerchief in her hand and telling Fred’s neighbor, the woman with the bosom and the pearls, that although she’d always been a loyal wife she hadn’t known on the day she was married, the day they first danced to that song, that their life together—May to December—would move so slowly or last so long.

  Outside, the band, perhaps sensing the mood, began to play “Galway Bay,” and the table nearest them began to sing along. Uncle John approached the children’s table with a fresh drink and pulled out Fred’s cousin’s empty chair. “How’d you like that last tune, Rosie?” he said as he sat down.


  The girl was cool. “Fine,” she said, and when he saw she would say no more he turned to the other girls, “Did you like it?” clearly unable to remember their names.

  “Yes,” they both said. “It had May in it,” the younger girl added. “For Aunt May.”

  “Oh, sure,” Uncle John said. As if that was the very reason he had chosen it. “It’s an old, old tune. Ever heard it before? No?” They shook their heads. “No? No? Oh yeah, a real oldie.” He sat back a little, brushing his jacket aside to slip a thumb through his belt. His white shirtfront was broad, his fingers short and square and covered with dark hairs. He seemed to speak to the spaces between them, or perhaps to his daughter’s turned cheek. “Written by Gentleman Jimmy Walker himself,” he said. “Know who he was?” The girls shook their heads again and he raised his thick eyebrows. “No?” he said, smiling Momma’s smile, “No? Jimmy Walker, Gentleman Jim? Don’t know who he was?”

  They thought to guess: a gangster, a prizefighter?

  “Gentleman Jimmy Walker?” their uncle asked once more just as Rosemary turned back to say, impatiently, “They don’t know,” and Patrick announced, “He was the Mayor of New York.”

  “That’s it,” Uncle John said, as if the girls themselves had come up with the answer. “Gentleman Jim was what they called him, ’cause of his clothes. Mayor of New York when I was a kid. Maybe they don’t teach you about him on Long Island. Very dapper. Someone told me once that he looked like my father”—he pushed out his lip and shrugged. “What did I know? But after that I always took a good look at him when he was in the papers, read up on him. He always wore different shades of the same color, they said. Very dapper, good-looking. Women loved him. He wrote that song.”

  He glanced briefly at his daughter and then took another long sip of his drink. The band was now playing “My Wild Irish Rose” and more of the guests had gathered around to sing, Fred and May among them with their arms around each other’s waists. “Funny thing was,” Uncle John said, suddenly reaching into his glass and poking at the ice with his finger, the way a man might chuck a baby under the chin, “he died the same way. Blood clot in the brain. Not as suddenly as my father died, but after a few days. Back in the forties, this was. He’d been making a kind of comeback. I saw him, oh, not too long before that, at a Communion breakfast over at Saint Peter’s. Gave a very nice talk and not too long after that he’s dead.”