“Joe - you were my first, I swear.” Her eyes stung with tears.
“That’s just not how I thought it was going to be, is all.”
“What did you expect?”
“I dunno,” said Joe. “But it don’t seem normal, is all.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, Lily berating herself for worrying about getting pregnant. They would be married soon anyway. She shouldn’t have made him pull out. Now she would always remember that their first time was with her, Joe, and the toilet. If only she had just let him go, he would have enjoyed it, and who knows - maybe she would have, too. And maybe now he would be holding her in his arms instead of standing there with one foot out the door. She hoped Joe would tell her what to do next, searching for a way to make him stay, to let her have another chance at it.
“My mother won’t be back until late,” said Lily finally. “I thought we could put a pizza in the oven, maybe watch some TV... ”
“I’m not really hungry,” he said. “And like I said, Anthony is waiting for me, and I don’t have any way to get a hold of him now. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
After he left, Lily went into the bathroom and checked herself for signs of bleeding, for some evidence to help determine whether or not her virtue had recently been surrendered, but found nothing there.
“We’re only having a hundred-and-fifty people at the wedding,” Lily protested. “We don’t need six bridesmaids and six ushers.”
“You can’t ask some of the wives and not the others,” insisted Lucy. Turning to Joe she said, “What’s the matter with you? You can’t ask some of them and not the others.” Lucy rarely bothered arguing with any of the women in the family; it was much more effective for her to employ the leverage she had with her sons. But at least Lucy was interested in their plans, which was more than Lily could say for her own mother, who was too distracted to spend time on such mundane matters as buffet fare and wedding bands. If it hadn’t been for Lucy and Anthony’s new wife Nancy, Lily wouldn’t even have known where to buy favors or what kind of flowers to order for the church.
“OK, Ma, OK - don’t worry about it,” said Joe. “We’ll figure it out.”
“And you know your brother Anthony has been out of work for three months now, so make sure the tuxedos are simple. Go with something simple. Just have plain black tuxedos.”
Simple and plain. They were the colors of Lily’s wedding.
“What do you think, Nancy?” Lily asked, turning her back to the mirror and looking over her shoulder to see what the dress looked like from behind. Victorian in style, the ivory dress boasted a long line of fabric covered buttons from the nape of her neck to the small of her back, accentuating Lily’s slender waist and shapely behind, a feature that Joe considered one of her best. “Your eyes might be Irish, but your coolie is Italian,” he’d said. Through long lace sleeves and a high lace collar, the dress both protected and revealed the promise of bare skin.
“I think it looks OK,” said Nancy.
Lily turned and looked over the opposite shoulder.
“It fits,” said Lily. Better to have a nice expensive wedding dress that was borrowed, than a crappy cheap one you owned. After all, it was just for the one day.
Lily felt more comfortable wearing an ivory gown; it was perfect for a woman of ambiguous virtue. Joe hadn’t asked for sex again since the night of their engagement, and Lily sometimes wondered if he had asked her to do it just to make sure she was telling the truth about being a virgin, which of course didn’t make much sense since that method of proof would make her virtue a moot point. She hoped that wasn’t why he’d asked. She hoped that he’d wanted to make love because he loved her, and that he hadn’t asked since so they would still have something to look forward to on their wedding night. She was sure the lovemaking would be better once they were married, once she wasn’t worried about getting pregnant or getting caught, or about changing her mind about marrying him. She couldn’t wait to have the ceremony behind her.
A week before the wedding, Joe and Lily picked up the keys to their new apartment at LaMont Manor behind the Gates Bowling Center. Joe had stayed in the apartment all week, moving small items in a carload at a time.
“Make sure I get those back,” Lucy shouted after them as they maneuvered a card table and four folding chairs into the Chevy Monte Carlo, which he got on even trade for his ailing Barracuda. Lucy stood on the front steps with a towel around her shoulders and a Winston at its permanent spot between the yellowed first and second fingers of her left hand. Lucy fancied herself a flaming redhead, and spent every other Saturday morning with her hair dripping in drugstore coloring. “No sense paying a hairdresser thirty goddamn dollars when I can do it myself for five bucks,” she would say.
Over the years, Lucy’s short hair had become thin and frizzed, a situation that was remedied by endless teasing and spraying, making the outline and surface of her scalp visible, as though her hair were a ball of red smoke sitting atop her head. Together with her over-arched, over-plucked eyebrows, the resulting effect was that of a woman in shock upon discovering that her head was on fire.
“Yeah, Ma - I know,” called Joe. “As soon as we get some furniture I’ll bring back your precious card table.” He anchored the trunk lid down to the rear bumper with an old piece of clothesline and flicked his cigarette butt onto the front lawn. “Jesus Christ,” he said to Lily. “You’d think the goddamn card table was made out of gold.”
Lily laughed at Joe’s ridicule, the way only family can get away with. She flicked her cigarette butt out the window, careful that it did not come back in where garbage bags full of Joe’s clothes were making the trip to their new apartment, which would be temporary until they could save enough for a down payment on a starter house. Between Lily’s position at SaveMart - which included a store discount - and Joe’s job at La Casa Bella, they planned to put enough money away to move again in a year or two.
“I absolutely am not going to miss her,” said Joe as they drove away, leaving Lucy on the front stoop scratching her left armpit, the cigarette dangling from her lips.
It was an ordinary morning. Ordinary May sunshine nonchalantly announced the day as Lily tumbled from her bed and wandered downstairs to make coffee. It seemed like a pretty good day to get married.
Lily’s mother was on the couch, engrossed in the local section of the newspaper, apparently more interested in what was happening in the world than she was in Lily’s wedding day. The bridesmaids wouldn’t be arriving for a few hours, so Lily settled next to her mother with the Saturday morning comics and two slices of toast with strawberry jam.
“Hey, Mom,” said Lily, smacking jam from her fingertips. “I had a really weird dream last night.”
“What was it?” said Lily’s mother, without looking up from the paper.
“Well, I was a deer, in the woods, running from a hunter.”
Lily’s mother put the paper down and turned her attention toward Lily.
“And I found this house and there was a lady inside baking cookies,” Lily looked off into the distance, as she continued. “And she had this apron tied around her waist. I ran into the house and I hid under her apron. Then the lady said to me, ‘Don’t worry little one - hunters are not allowed to shoot doe.’”
Her mother laughed.
“Isn’t that weird?” Lily asked, turning her attention back to her mother and taking another bite of toast.
“I don’t know if it’s weird, but it is very interesting.”
“Interesting?” asked Lily.
“Let’s just say it’s a classic,” said her mother. She lifted the paper again.
“It seemed so real. I was really scared.”
Lily played the dream in her mind again, getting lost in the emotions it evoked – the terror of being chased, the relief of being protected.
“You know what I mean, Mom? It just seemed so real.”
“Uh-huh,” said her mother, lost again in the newspaper. “Dreams are
like that.”
After breakfast, Lily returned to her bedroom to collect the things she would need for the ceremony. “Well, my dress is borrowed, so I have that covered,” she said to herself. “And this is new,” she said, slipping the garter over her toes and sliding it into place just above her knee. “Now for something blue.” She rummaged through her underwear drawer and came upon the small leather pouch that Iris had presented her with when she’d returned from that first trip to Italy. Was that really just two summers ago? Lily unknotted the drawstring and lifted out the rosary of blue crystal beads. She held it up in the morning sunlight. It sparkled like a tiny constellation in her hands.
The telephone rang and Lily’s mother shouted from the living room, “Lily! Iris is on the phone!”
Lily rushed to pick up the extension in her room. “I got it, Mom! Hi, Iris! I was just thinking about you!” Though it only took a second or two for the telephone line to transport a voice across the ocean and then return its reply, the awareness of the distance between them wedged itself into the minuscule chasm of silence.
“Hello there, little bride - happy wedding day!”
“Thank you!”
“What kind of weather did you get?”
“It’s really nice right now - sunny and warm. They say it will rain later, but I don’t know - what’s that saying again? Sposa bagnata, sposa fortunata?”
“Bravissima! A wet bride is a lucky bride - it sure has proved true for me!”
“I forgot that it rained on your wedding day,” said Lily. But at least I was there. “I wish you were here, Iris.”
The pause was longer than normal, and Iris’ voice cracked when she spoke. “Me too - it’s just that since we came for Christmas, you know, it was too hard for Gregorio to get off work and everything.”
“Yeah, I know.” But Christmas comes every year, she wanted to say. This is my only wedding day. What did it matter now? What good would it do to tell her that? She knew. She already knew.
“But we’ll be there again this Christmas - that’s only seven months away!”
“Yeah,” said Lily. That’s not exactly the same thing.
“Lily,” shouted her mother. “The photographer is here! Come on down and let’s get you dressed!”
“I gotta go,” said Lily. “The photographer is here.”
“Well, have a great time today, kiddo! And remember, I love you!”
“I love you too.” But you should be here.
“Ciao!”
“Good-bye, Iris.” Lily slowly set the receiver back into the cradle. “See ya,” she said as she grabbed her dress off the back of the door and walked out of her bedroom, leaving the rosary by the telephone.
Lily gathered up the long train in her arms and backed her body out of her mother’s rusty old Plymouth Duster. She settled herself into the side vestibule, as the last of the guests filtered into the church. The bridesmaids sorted through the box of flowers, each one selecting a nosegay, only to discover that there was no bridal bouquet in the box.
“Hmm... they must have forgotten it,” Lily remarked to her bridesmaids. “If each one of you just gives me a couple flowers, I’ll have enough to make a bouquet. No one will even notice.”
As Lily stood at the back of the church, the train of her gown lay twisted and crumpled behind her, the job of straightening it into a grand splay having fallen to a disinterested bridesmaid - all of whom were Joe’s sisters-in-law, not one of whom Lily could call a real friend.
One by one, the bridesmaids proceeded down the aisle toward the altar. Lily stood arm in arm with her father. It was the first time she had seen him in months - since the last time Iris had been home. He jingled the loose change in his pocket with his free hand. They both faced silently forward. Lily could not wait to get to the other end of the aisle, to be relieved of the discomfort of the facade.
“He’s your father,” Joe had said. “You have to have him give you away.”
“But he doesn’t even really like me - or you, for that matter. He isn’t giving me a penny for the wedding. He didn’t even call me or send a card on my birthday. Why do I have to have him give me away? It’s so fake.”
“Because - think about how bad he would feel, how embarrassed to be at his youngest daughter’s wedding, sitting in a pew with everyone else. You can’t do that to him, Lil. Plus, people will ask questions, and then we’ll have to tell them that your parents are divorced and everything. This way no one has to know.”
Joe had become the voice of reason in their relationship, guiding Lily and protecting her from making decisions clouded by emotion. It was a comfort to have access to such unwavering clarity.
The flower girl reached the top of the aisle, which meant Lily was next. As the organ belted out “The Wedding March”, Lily inhaled sharply, automatically tightened her grip on her father’s arm, and stepped into the sanctuary. From behind her veil, the pews appeared to be occupied by ghostly figures, some of them snapping photos, some dabbing at their eyes with tissue, many of them staring blankly, most of them strangers. At the front of the church stood Joe, clad in an ivory tuxedo, fidgeting.
If Iris were there, she’d be sitting right in that pew in front of Henry, Louis, Violet, Jasmine, Marguerite, all with children in their arms and spouses at their sides. If Iris were there she would have been Lily’s Matron of Honor, and she would have been sure the flower order was right and that Lily had a proper bridal bouquet and that her train was arranged in a perfect display behind her. If Iris were there. Lily blinked back tears.
The organ music drew Lily forward down the aisle. How curious that the instrument used to present brides to their grooms was the same used to escort unsuspecting travelers toward houses of horror in the movies.
Lily’s attention was drawn to the crucifix suspended from the ceiling, appearing to hang directly over Joe’s smiling face. She was gripped with fear, suddenly feeling that she didn’t belong there. It’s just cold feet. Like Jesus had in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus wouldn’t allow her to go through with this if it was a mistake, if it wasn’t meant to be. Doing the right thing doesn’t always feel right. After all, he gave his life for us - saving us from ourselves was kind of his thing, right? Dear Jesus, Lily prayed. If I’m not supposed to do this, please give me a sign. Yet she couldn’t imagine what kind of a sign would have the power to stop a wedding in progress, short of an earthquake or a tornado. Especially a wedding where Lucy Diotallevi was the mother of the groom. Anyway, what about all these people, all the money she and Joe had paid for the reception, all the embarrassment it would cause? Lily repeated to herself, It’s just cold feet. It’s just cold feet.
The Diotallevi side of the church held twice as many people as the Capotosti side. The modern stained glass windows cast gentle geometric patterns over them all: a splash of blue on Auntie Rosa’s white head, a veil of green on Lily’s mother in her simple pink suit. Lucy stood proudly in the first pew, chin held high, lips pursed and eyebrows raised, in her best effort to look refined and proper, the chatty glitter of her green beaded dress fading to a whisper as the sun slipped behind gathering clouds in the sky.
Halfway down the aisle, Lily was seized with the desire to stop. Stop walking forward. Turn around. Run back outside. Get into the car. Drive home. Go in the house and lock the door. Her gait was interrupted by an instant of hesitation, and her father turned to her. In the split moment that they looked at each other, Lily imagined him asking her, “Are you OK? Are you sure you want to do this? It’s not too late to change your mind.” She was ready to say, “Daddy, please get me out of here.” And then he would encircle her with his arms, and walk her back out into the sunshine, to safety. Instead, he tugged on her arm, leading her forward. He must have lifted her veil, for it was raised. He must have kissed her cheek, for the scent of H’ai Karate cologne lingered on her skin. He must have walked away and left her there, because one moment she was holding his arm, and the next she was holding Joe’s.
The music
stopped. Someone coughed. The back door of the sanctuary creaked, announcing a latecomer. Thunder rumbled in the distance. The priest’s lips started to move. Indiscernible sounds tumbled out into air.
Lily looked at Joe. He smiled and winked. He had been her only friend these past couple years. The acrimony between Lily’s parents went endlessly on, her father refusing to divorce his wife on the grounds of abandonment, and her mother - in the absence of documented proof of any sort of abuse - having no legal grounds of her own. They were locked together in separation, even more violently and hopelessly than they had been in marriage. Till death do us part.
“I, Lily Elizabeth Capotosti, take you, Joseph Michael Diotallevi, to be my lawfully wedded husband...” Lily repeated the promise of undying love and fidelity doled out to her by the priest. She wasn’t yet twenty; forever seemed like a very long time.
The congregation recited prayers. They stood, sat down, knelt, and raised themselves up again on cue until at last Lily found herself facing them, being announced by the priest as “Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Diotallevi!” As the organ pounded out the recessional, the congregation erupted into applause. Lily heaved a sigh of relief. It’s over.
Lily and Joe walked arm in arm back down the aisle toward the open doors and out into pounding rain and flashes of lightning.
From: Lily Capotosti
To: Iris Capotosti
Sent: Wed, September 1, 2010 at 9:13 PM
Subject: There went the bride
Hi, Iris:
Reading about our wedding days made me think of those “Fractured Fairy Tales” that they used to have on the Saturday morning cartoons when we were kids. Do you remember them? They started with this little Fairy Godmother trying to open the cover of a book and she wouldn’t have the strength to do it, and each time, the book would slam shut on her. The stories were all convoluted, but ironically, they still ended well. So whether you get the real fairy tale like you did or the fractured one like I did, it all comes down to the ending, I suppose.
[Iris and Lily 01.0 - 03.0] The Complete Series Page 60
