Gladys Reunited

by Sandi Toksvig

  The Mormon monk fumbled in his inside pocket and pulled out pieces of paper, which he handed to the bride and groom. Leslie was beaming. You could feel her happiness. It pulsated in the room and made me that ridiculous tearful thing that women often become at weddings. David, however, appeared to be on valium. His poem was called ‘Silent Movie’ which caused a ripple of laughter. I joined in. Not because I thought it was funny but it was better than being quiet. Leslie’s verse seemed to be about ‘precious love’ while David’s recurring theme was more of a Laurel and Hardy ‘How did we get into this mess?’

  Finally they kissed and people felt free to clap. Then we were all asked to line up and congratulate them. Lori and I joined the line late and last. Leslie smiled and hugged us together. It was a strange moment and I felt extremely awkward. I didn’t really know this person at all. I don’t know what we talked about — how far we’d come, how lovely it was to be invited. I stood with my hands behind my back having suddenly turned into Prince Philip opening a cheese factory. We went to sit down.

  ‘Don’t you think we should talk to David?’ whispered Lori. He stood separately from his new wife under a ventilation fan. It seems to be what happens at weddings. A man and a woman are joined in holy matrimony and then don’t speak to each other for the rest of the evening. We dutifully lined up for David. It had been socially correct but, as it happens, he couldn’t have cared less and looked elsewhere the entire time we were talking. I decided he probably wasn’t going to be our big friend. It was odd. I think if old friends of my partner’s turned up, having travelled thousands of miles, I might have shown a passing interest.

  Leslie had been thoughtful and put us at the long table next to hers. She had also placed two families with young children. The booster seats on either side of us struck me as a bad sign for conversation. The other people were very straightforward and didn’t even try to be our friends. It was curious and seemed very un-American to me. The man and woman sitting directly opposite us had a small boy called Wills. He was about two. I knew he was called Wills not because anyone bothered to introduce themselves but because throughout the ceremony all you could hear was an exasperated but utterly unenforced ‘Oh Wills!’ as the child attempted to wreck everything in a quarter-mile radius. Perhaps his mother didn’t normally look after him for she clearly had no idea what to do as he ran riot, sticking his fingers in the sockets of fairy lights and attempting to eat several table decorations.

  Leslie’s brother, Eric, had been at our table but moved when Lori made the mistake of asking him a direct question.

  ‘So, Eric, where are you?’ I know she intended it as a general question of geography. Eric had been at school with Lori’s brother so she knew him to say hello to. A thick-set man with a thin moustache and the build of an American football player, he took the question badly.

  ‘Why do people always ask that? Why does it matter where you are in the world?’

  It didn’t really. It had only been chit-chat. We found out from someone else that he lived in Idaho and repaired computers. Perhaps something in that was a source of shame but I couldn’t spot it. He had no partner or wife that we could see and stolidly moved to the other side of the room where no one could make further enquiries.

  There was a woman at the table called Susan. She was from Connecticut and had been at college with Leslie. She had three young sons one of whom, aged about eleven, would not let go of her. He hung round her neck while she dandled a two-year-old on her knees. Her life was patently not her own. There wasn’t a husband around and her conversation was limited due to the filial goitre condition from which she was suffering. She never asked us anything about ourselves. seems to be an American thing to talk at length about yourself (unless you’re doing that computer thing in Idaho) but not to show any particular interest in anyone else. She had been ‘in theater’ in her youth. ‘I acted and stuff but then my family came along.’

  I thought it a curious expression, ‘my family came along’. It made pregnancy sound like a bus you weren’t expecting. She had moved to Connecticut and now she ‘did’ real estate. There was an edge of disappointment and defensiveness in what she said. She had clearly sacrificed her theatrical ambitions for her boys. I found myself saying, ‘Well, real estate is a kind of performance.’

  I couldn’t think how these words had come from my mouth but they hit the spot.

  She nodded vigorously. ‘Absolutely. You have to sell a property to people and you have to understand the spirit of a house to know who should fill it. You have to get the match right.’

  This was so far from the British concept of house selling that I couldn’t grasp it as a thought. American realtors will show potential home buyers the schools and churches, and local shops. The British estate agent doesn’t even want to make an appointment for you to see the house. American realtors have a much greater sense of ‘the community’. When we moved to Mamaroneck, the woman who had let the house to us never seemed to be out of the place. She really wanted us to ‘settle in’ to the town. Today, I don’t know how much of that attention belongs to the ‘have a good day’ school of superficial interaction and how much of it is real.

  Just when I thought we were getting along, Susan became preoccupied with her children and we were dismissed. I decided it was my fault and that I lacked the ability to make friends. Lori and I went outside for some air and saw that some of the other shops in the strip mall were still open. It was 6.30 and an announcement had been made that dinner would be at 8 p.m. With no one to talk to we wandered off to the shops.

  The RadioShack was open to sell us computers and telephones but the nearest store was a CVS pharmacy, a giant supermarket selling over-the-counter drugs. It was a fantastic place with each aisle running one hundred yards from front to back. The use of anaesthetics was discovered in Atlanta by a doctor who had enjoyed experimenting with recreational drugs in medical school. Coca-Cola also started life here in 1886, at the hands of a pharmacist called John S. Pemberton. It was made with fifteen different ingredients and was guaranteed to ‘refresh’ you, mainly because, as I understand it, it originally contained cocaine. Just think, Pemberton sold the rights to the whole thing for just $2,300. Even today I imagine the crying of Pemberton descendants can be heard long into the Georgian night.

  The pharmacy was awash with mind- and body-changing possibilities. Here you could see something of the American lifestyle in microcosm. There was not a haemorrhoid preparations section, there was a haemorrhoid preparations aisle. You could walk for three or four minutes knee-deep in pills and potions for the poor posterior. What can have happened to a country that has such trouble with its bottoms?

  I wanted to buy some sleeping pills and there were acres of those too. Thinking about sleep then put me in mind of how I might stay awake through the evening. I was turning into Judy Garland as I bought both sleeping pills and ‘Revive with Vivarin’ —an Alertness Aid with Caffeine. The place was also full of Christmas tat, including rolls of fake brown bricks in case you wanted to build your own Christmas village scene. I thought we probably had time and no one would really notice at our table in the corner but in the end we decided against it. We were the only customers and it was the manager who rang up the till. It felt like a quintessentially American experience to shop at night under neon in a giant, empty place. I would have quite enjoyed it except we had come for a wedding.

  Back at the event in question we had not been missed. We were, however, just in time for the speech and a toast to the bride and groom. I had learned several things about David. First that he was a film student and second that he collected unusual beer. (He had 500 beer bottles in his collection which explained the table centres.) He was also a fan of Bollywood movies, that particular Indian fare of rich sets in front of which people fall in love, while elephants hover in the background. This explained the Indian restaurant.

  ‘So are you going to go to India for your honeymoon?’ I asked Leslie.

  ‘Oh, David doesn’t a
ctually want to go there,’ she said. ‘He just likes the movies.’

  David’s closest friend from his school days was the best man.

  He had written his speech out single-space on three sides of A4 and was unable to find his place on the page at any point during the talk. It was, as is customary on both sides of the Atlantic, supposed to be a hilarious account of David’s rakish youth. Consequently it was incomprehensible. As far as I could gather, the two men seem to have been arrested under amusing circumstances but only David’s immediate family was able to get the joke. I have spoken three times for female friends at their nuptials but it still isn’t the norm for a wedding. No one spoke for Leslie. She was David’s now.

  After this it was time to salute the couple. Apart from selecting the venue, David had also chosen some special beer for the toast. It was obviously extremely special as it had both a metal cap on the bottle and a cork underneath it. It was dished out sparingly having come all the way from Belgium. Someone said a few nice words, everyone raised their glass and drank. This was followed by the unified sound of over a hundred people retching as quietly as they were able. It was raspberry beer and it had come all the way from Belgium because no one in the Low Countries would have wanted to drink it.

  Lori and I discussed what we would do if we ever got married. Neither of us ever has. I think we both felt a little sad and spinsters of this parishish. Despite being gay, or maybe because of. it, I would love to get married. I would love to have my family and friends celebrate and welcome my partner.

  ‘I’d still like that one other person who “fits”,’ mused Lori and I guess that is what we all want. The other half of our jigsaw puzzle. Richard had bought the National Enquirer at Newark airport, in which there was a large article about the American comic and famously out lesbian Ellen De Generes. Allegedly she had found a new love after Anne Heche buggered off. Anne and she had been ‘in love for life’. Two years on and it was over. If lesbians could marry would it change things? Would it help give a framework for commitment? Lori couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just have a ceremony but the truth is that I couldn’t stand the pain of it not really meaning anything.

  Lori and I discussed what we would do for a wedding. It is, after all, something of a theatrical affair. In general, I think we felt that Indian restaurants were out. The food was finally served but I couldn’t really eat. Just twenty-four hours earlier I had been cracking jokes in Birmingham and now I was eating bits of Bangladesh in a shopping mall. It was quite surreal and only became more so as the alertness aid kicked in on top of the raspberry beer and the wine. I think I was becoming slightly hyper when the belly dancer appeared. If the crowd, who were mostly old with old money, had hated the beer, the belly dancer got an even better reception. You could almost hum along to the rattle of teeth as collective jaws hit their plates of poppadoms.

  She was very young, very thin and had stuck a jewel in her belly button presumably with a bit of Blu-Tack. She had long orange hair, which I thought was a nice touch as it matched the table decorations. Her body, much of which was revealed, was heavily hennaed and tattooed. I am not a great fan of belly dancing. It is something mine does just getting out of bed and I don’t really see the skill in it. Apparently this woman was very good indeed. She approached the fake parquet dance floor with the blade of a large sword balanced on her head. This was not a sword for beginners. It was at least three foot long and wide enough to make light of a substantial loaf. I had a sneaky feeling I knew where she had bought it. There was much whispering among the guests. ‘Don’t try this at home kids.’ Most of them were by now in shock. Each one spent some time telling Richard they didn’t want ‘people in England to think this is normal’.

  The woman danced for quite some time showing a remarkable agility at maintaining the sword on top of her head and not taking off an ear lobe. It was a skill that might perhaps have amused the troops in the many Civil War battles fought not minutes from the strip mall we were in. I couldn’t really think of another use for it.

  The chances of you happening to have a yard-long sword about your person to impress at a disco seemed limited. Anyway she did it very well and then she did it again and then a bit more. Then she touched the floor behind her bottom with her nose and pointed round the room a bit to get other people to dance with her. There was much shuffling and looking down from the other guests and I found myself standing with my arms firmly crossed over my chest. I don’t dance at the best of times. I certainly wasn’t going to start with cutlery on my head in a Georgian Indian restaurant in front of people I had never met before. It presented an interesting social dilemma. Would it have helped me win friends and impress or just have confirmed their opinion that I was not quite the thing?

  Of course David, who was responsible for us all being there in the first place, got up and did the sword thing and then I think Leslie felt compelled to dance around him. She looked great and you could tell it was love otherwise I don’t think she would have done it.

  Lori and I decided that the belly dancer ought to do brises as well as weddings. For those of you who’ve never had the joy of attending, a bris is the ceremony of Jewish circumcision. We thought the dancer could provide her own cutting equipment and then dance around afterwards to cover up the baby’s cries. I managed to chat with her afterwards. Well, there wasn’t exactly a queue for her autograph. I always think it is a sign of your place at a social function if you end up gossiping with the entertainment. She also taught belly dancing but this, pleasingly, was not the limit of her skills. ‘I also do goddess posturing,’ she explained.

  This was not a statement for which I could think of a single suitable follow-up question other than, ‘What?’

  I was, of course, being breathtakingly ignorant and she eyed me with pity. ‘Goddess posturing!’ she said, using the technique of repetition often employed by the English when talking to foreigners. ‘I’ve studied the poses of the goddesses on Grecian urns and now I teach them to bring people serenity and to help alleviate stress.’

  I only wished we were staying longer.

  The bus driver reappeared in the pouring rain like Lord Roberts arriving at the Relief of Mafeking. Richard and Lori found me under a table, wide-awake, with a butter knife on my head, trying to pose as Pythia, Goddess of the Griddle or very like.

  We were herded back on the bus. Packed to the gills with artificially induced caffeine, I had many things I was prepared to talk about. It had been a very strange experience for all of us but somehow it didn’t make the conversation any easier. We had begun as interlopers and sadly so it remained.

  The next morning I was buzzing on a combination of caffeine and Sleep Rite. I didn’t know whether to sleep or salsa. The TV offered me five channels direct to God, two sets of cartoons, a kid’s movie, CNN and an opportunity to pay to see Sorority Shower Cam. I opted for CNN where someone was presenting a serious analysis of the problem with chad droppings. I was hung-over, fat and sad. The perfect state to be in on a journey in which I was questioning everything in my life. The hotel had provided a magazine called Appalachian Lift that promised me ‘History, Humour and Culture’. It also had a long article about Margaret Mitchell, about her life and her good husband who brought in the ready money while she wrote. I decided I wanted a husband who would look after me and leave me at home to write the one great novel for nine years. I certainly know that I have it in me to be a recluse. I have had to be jolly for so long that it might be quite pleasant not to bother for a bit.

  CNN moved on to more arguing in the Supreme Court about whether the re-counts count. A very angry, very white Republican woman appeared.

  ‘You’d have to beat me and drug me to get me to believe these re-counts are being done fairly.’

  ‘We are good people doing a good job,’ countered a very sensible black woman.

  Elsewhere, Dick Cheney was in hospital with chest pains and Bush had boils on his head. Those Republican boys didn’t seem to be able to stand the strai
n of the vote counting. How well we would all sleep in our beds if they got to run the place..

  I went to the wedding breakfast where I tried some unspeakable food. Lori told me not to be so judgemental.

  There are certain foods,’ she said, ‘which you have to grow up with in order to like. Comfort food.’

  I think she was right. I also think that unless you are on a major highway towards ‘carb-loading’ then grits and biscuits with gravy have no place on the morning table. I put both on my plate from the buffet because I like to have a go at everything culinary. I have in my time eaten both locust and zebra and enjoyed neither but I’m proud of my attempts to eat local. Grits are pure white with a thin porridge texture and a slight seediness. They taste of absolutely nothing. When president-elect William Howard Taft visited Atlanta in 1909 he was served a thirty-pound barbequed possum and only took one bite, so I was not the first person to decline to eat Southern delicacies.

  For reasons I can’t fathom, the same people who had sat with us the night before and not really spoken came and sat with us now and didn’t really speak. There were no assigned places. They didn’t need to sit with us but perhaps they too didn’t know many people. It was like the first days in the school cafeteria where you gravitate towards any face which seems vaguely familiar. Wills, the uncontrollable child, had not been subdued by sleep. Indeed, it was possible he too had been munching his way through a packet of Vivarin. His father, a bespectacled businessman with neat hair, had no concept of how to feed children at all. He had piled a plate full of everything the buffet had to offer, placed Wills on his lap and then simply allowed him to rummage through it with small fat little hands.