Sister of the Bride

by Beverly Cleary

  Barbara, who had served the pie, now took her place at the table. She was careful to keep her eyes on her pie.

  “Who knows? Maybe they’ve had a fight. Maybe our daughter is coming home to mend her broken heart,” said Mr. MacLane jovially. “You know how kids are.”

  The family ate the pie with the beady meringue in silence for a few minutes. Barbara tried to think of something to say that was far removed from the subject of Rosemary and Greg, but all she could think of was her walk home with Tootie Bodger, and she was not particularly eager to mention him. Her mother was always so enthusiastic about Tootie. He was such a nice boy, she said, in spite of that ridiculous nickname. Barbara decided that if she absolutely had to, she would fling Tootie into the conversation to keep her family from asking too many questions about Rosemary, but only as a last desperate measure. She was beginning to feel worn-out from the excitement of her secret. Maybe by now she was too tired even to want to tell it. She hoped so.

  People should keep their own secrets, Barbara thought suddenly. Rosemary had not been able to contain her secret and, to relieve her own crescendo feeling, had passed it on to Barbara who, according to the unreasonable rules of secrets, had to contain it or feel that she had betrayed her trust. It was not fair.

  “Tom, do you think Rosemary is getting serious about this Greg? Really serious, I mean,” Mrs. MacLane suddenly asked her husband. “She has talked about nothing but Greg for months, and now they’ve been going to museums together. You know that isn’t a bit like Rosemary.”

  Gordy agreed. “A wienie roast is more her speed.”

  If I were a character in a comedy, I would either choke on my pie or spill my milk, thought Barbara, who did neither, even though she would have liked to distract her parents in some way. Perhaps this was the moment to fling Tootie Bodger into the conversation.

  “I hope not,” said Mr. MacLane. “She’s only eighteen, and she has three more years of college.”

  “I know…” said Mrs. MacLane thoughtfully, “but girls get married younger nowadays. You know that. And a girl as attractive as Rosemary is bound to meet someone sooner or later in such a large school.”

  “She had better buckle down and bring up her grades if she expects to stay there long enough to meet him,” observed Mr. MacLane.

  “I wonder if Greg had anything to do with her poor grades last semester,” mused Mrs. MacLane. “Or was it the shock of finding herself one of over twenty thousand students after a small high school?”

  “She’s up against competition that is a lot stiffer than anything she has ever faced before,” Mr. MacLane pointed out, as he pulled a cigar out of his shirt pocket and took off the cellophane wrapper. He always settled back and smoked a cigar after dinner, and there was nothing his daughters could do about it. “Besides, why on earth would she want to marry Greg?” he asked in the jovial manner a cigar always evoked. “I doubt if he could support her in the style to which she is accustomed, and that style includes twenty-five dollars a month for the orthodontist. I’m certainly not going to support her after she gets married.”

  “She won’t be wearing bands very much longer,” said Mrs. MacLane.

  Oh, thought Barbara, nervously rolling the edge of the place mat between her fingers, this is awful. Now it was too late to throw in Tootie Bodger to save Rosemary. “I thought Greg was nice,” she said, and hoped her remark was not significantly conspicuous.

  Mrs. MacLane considered Greg. “For one thing, he is older than Rosemary and has been in the Air Force. I think she finds that attractive.”

  Mr. MacLane lit his cigar, shook the lighted match, and blew out a puff of smoke. “If it’s age she wants, I’m sure she can find someone more decrepit than Greg.”

  Oh, swell, thought Barbara miserably. Now he was going to start being funny. She was sure of one thing. Her husband, if she ever had one, would never smoke cigars. That was qualification number one. Positively no cigar smoking. Qualification number two: Be serious about his daughters.

  “Barbara, get me an ashtray,” Mr. MacLane ordered.

  “Sure, Dad.” Barbara was glad to leave the table even for a moment. She would have liked to excuse herself altogether, but the conversation had such a horrid fascination she could not bring herself to miss it.

  Mr. MacLane accepted the ashtray. “A man’s home is his castle,” he informed his family. “He has a right to expect ashtrays to be handy and salt shakers to be full at all times.”

  “And never find nylons dripping in the bathroom,” prompted Barbara, hoping her father would elaborate on a man’s home is his castle. This was a subject that could keep him going as long as his cigar lasted. The vacuum cleaner should never be run while the man of the castle was listening to the ball game. Telephone calls from other girls should not exceed five minutes. Anything worth saying could be said in that length of time. That sort of thing, on and on in a bantering way that had a serious undercurrent.

  Mrs. MacLane, however, was not ready to let the subject of Rosemary drop. “I wouldn’t like to see her get really serious about a boy when she is only eighteen. It seems so awfully young.”

  “Rosemary married? That’s a laugh.” Gordy, having finished the last crumb of piecrust, was ready to join the conversation. “Remember that time she cooked the cucumbers, because she thought they were zucchini? The poor guy would starve to death.”

  Mr. MacLane leaned back in his chair and exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. “Supposing she is serious about him,” he said good-naturedly. “That doesn’t guarantee he is serious about her. She’ll have to catch him before she can marry him.”

  Barbara kept her mouth shut tight.

  “E. E. Cummings,” said Mr. MacLane derisively, and Barbara could see that he was all set for one of those half-jovial, bantering conversations. “I would hate to see any daughter of mine throw herself away on someone who approved of writers who did not use punctuation or capitals. This fellow Greg probably likes archy and mehitabel, too.”

  “So do I, Dad,” said Barbara. “And the reason there aren’t any capitals in archy and mehitabel is that it was supposed to be typed by a cockroach, who couldn’t jump on the capital key and a letter key at the same time. The author wasn’t just being lazy. He had a good reason.”

  Mr. MacLane chuckled. “A book written by a cockroach is just about what I would expect this fellow to like.”

  Barbara laughed in spite of herself.

  Mrs. MacLane had ignored this bit of conversation. “I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “I wish I did.”

  Mr. MacLane flicked a little tower of ash from his cigar and smiled. “I wouldn’t worry if I were you. Why would anybody want to marry a flighty girl like Rosemary?”

  “Dad!” Barbara’s exclamation was involuntary. “Is that the way you talk about us behind our backs?”

  “All the time,” answered her father comfortably.

  Barbara sat in injured silence. It was no wonder Gordy was such an exasperating brother. It was hereditary. He had an exasperating father. She wondered what it was like to be some other girl, one with a meek father who agreed to everything and handed out a nice fat allowance.

  “Oh, I don’t know that Rosemary is completely scatterbrained,” said Mrs. MacLane seriously. “She just likes to have a good time and, besides, college students have so much to do, I think they sometimes seem to be going in several directions at once. She is really a very well-meaning child.” Child, thought Barbara dismally. Rosemary is practically a married woman, and Mother is calling her a child.

  “She has never uttered one word of complaint about having to live in a cooperative house at the university. Washing glassware for a hundred girls after dinner every day as her share of the work can’t really be a pleasure. She seems to enjoy her life, and so many girls we know would be unhappy if they couldn’t live in a sorority house or at least one of the new dormitories.”

  “Well, I wish she would stop scattering her brains and bring her grades up,” said Mr. MacLane.
“I think I’ll have a talk with her this weekend. Tell her she can’t carry fifteen units of studies and another fifteen of this Greg and expect to make the grade.”

  If her father had begun to talk about Rosemary’s grades and Greg at the same time, the moment had come for Barbara to make the sacrifice and throw Tootie Bodger into the conversation. “Tootie Bodger walked home with me today,” she announced.

  “That’s nice,” said Mrs. MacLane. “Tootie is such a nice boy.”

  “I suppose so,” said Barbara. Tootie was probably kind to animals, too, but that did not make her want to go to the movies with him.

  “He’ll probably ask to take you out one of these days.” Mrs. MacLane smiled her approval at her younger daughter.

  “Maybe,” murmured Barbara. Harmless old Tootie—kind to animals, trusted by mothers—Barbara would be only too happy to trade him for a best man or an usher.

  “What that boy needs is to turn out for basketball,” remarked Mr. MacLane, who not only knew every boy in Bayview High, but had definite opinions about what they should or should not do.

  “But he would only fall all over his own feet.” Barbara used the words straight from Tootie’s mouth and wondered how she got on this side of the argument. Probably because she was talking to her father. For some reason, the last couple of years, she seemed to argue with her father every time she talked to him whether she intended to argue or not. She had not meant to defend Tootie, although she liked him in an impatient sort of way. She even felt a little sorry for him, since Gordy had pointed out that he was shaped like a trombone.

  “If he learned to handle himself on the basketball court he might stop falling over his feet,” Mr. MacLane said.

  “But Tootie doesn’t want to conform.” Barbara knew her father felt there was too much conformity among high school students. “He doesn’t want to be pressured into playing basketball just because he’s tall. He wants to play his trombone.”

  “He could do both,” suggested Mr. MacLane, “although not necessarily at the same time.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Barbara, ruffled at her father’s attempt at humor. “Tootie is dedicated to his trombone. He is serious about it. He is studying with a man from the San Francisco Symphony. He just plays The Tiger Rag and things like that because the students like it.”

  “I don’t see why he puts up with a nickname like Tootie,” mused Mrs. MacLane.

  “He likes it better than his real name,” explained Barbara. “How would you feel if you were six feet four and your real name was Robin?”

  “I can’t imagine what Nancy Bodger was thinking of when she named him Robin. He must have been a fat, pink baby,” said Mrs. MacLane, and she patted Barbara’s hand. “I’m glad you like him, dear.”

  Now I’ve done it, thought Barbara. Just wait until the next Amy meeting.

  Mrs. MacLane’s club, originally called L’ Ami, because this was French for friend, had been changed by some irreverent husband, possibly Mr. MacLane, to the Amy Club, and its members were known to their families as the Amys. When the club was formed its purpose had been the raising of funds for worthy causes, but somehow over the years it had gradually become a social club, without officers or dues or even regular meetings, whose chief purpose, as far as Barbara could see, was to be an excuse for its members to get together, eat rich desserts, and talk about their children, usually in a humorous vein. Rosemary and Barbara poked fun at the Amys, and Rosemary said the real trouble with the Amys was that they did not use their minds.

  Now Mrs. MacLane and Mrs. Bodger would probably compare notes, conclude that Tootie and Barbara liked one another, and make all sorts of little plans to help them get together. If Barbara did not look out she was going to be stuck with Tootie, all because her father made her feel contrary.

  Barbara suppressed a sigh as she rose to clear the table. She could not help feeling noble at the way she had sacrificed herself to help save Rosemary—for the moment. She did not envy her sister the weekend that lay ahead, because she was not sure her father had been entirely joking in his remarks about Rosemary and Greg. He often spoke lightly of matters that he was most serious about.

  Mr. MacLane, who had worked with young people so many years, was never intimidated by them, and he never hesitated to speak his mind. It was a real problem. Barbara sometimes felt that life would be easier for her and Rosemary if they had a father who could be moved by persuasion, tears, or sulky silence. Poor Rosemary. She wondered if she should try to telephone her at the dormitory to warn her of what lay ahead, but she decided against it. There would be plenty of time for warnings when she met Rosemary at the Greyhound station. Let Rosemary have a few more days of happiness.

  Mr. MacLane had left the table and had settled himself in the living room to enjoy his cigar and his evening paper. Barbara cleared away the last dessert plate, and as she rinsed them under the faucet she wondered how anything as fluffy as meringue, even beady meringue, could become so gluey when it stuck to the plates. Her mood was no longer crescendo. Since her father’s remarks about Greg and Rosemary, diminuendo was a better word. Her excitement was diminished to the point where her secret was going to be easy to keep until Friday. She no longer wanted to tell anybody because, if the dinner table conversation was any indication, there might not be a wedding at all.

  Chapter 3

  Barbara’s spirits refused to remain diminished. She spent the next few days alternately imagining the trouble Rosemary was going to have with their father and dreaming about the wedding. She wondered what would happen if her father said flatly that Rosemary could not marry Greg. But he couldn’t say that, not really, because Rosemary was eighteen. But if he did, and of course he wouldn’t—or would he?—it might make a difference in the wedding plans. Maybe Rosemary and Greg would feel they had to elope, and that would spoil all the fun. There wouldn’t be any bride’s bouquet to catch.

  In a happier mood Barbara read the society pages in the newspaper. No wedding story escaped her. Brides in satin, brides in faille, brides in organdy, brides with wreaths, Juliet caps, and cathedral trains, brides in suits—Barbara passed quickly over these unimaginative creatures and went on to brides with nosegays, shower bouquets, or prayer books—there seemed to be no end to the delightful possibilities. And the attendants! Bridesmaids in yellow organza with sprays of gladioli, bridesmaids in turquoise taffeta with daffodils, a single attendant in blue chiffon with a nosegay of garnet roses and carnations.

  It all made such lovely springtime reading.

  Then Barbara happened upon a description of a slipper-satin wedding gown that had been worn almost ten years before by an older sister, who had been married in the same church. During the interval, the story said, the ivory shade of the dress had deepened to soft gold. This made Barbara stop and think. Being careful with his money as he was, insisting on margarine instead of butter, her father would probably expect her to use the same wedding dress when her turn came—that phrase again! She had spent her whole life waiting for her turn to come—and yellow was her most unbecoming color. She would never want to walk down the aisle in yellow. Somehow she would have to see to it that Rosemary did not choose ivory satin. In fact, if both of them were to wear the same dress, it seemed only fair that they select it together. It would be their wedding dress, not just Rosemary’s. Our wedding gown, thought Barbara dreamily, and she began to see herself clinging to her father’s arm, her eyes lowered, starting down the aisle some hazy day in the far, far distant future.

  Friday afternoon at five o’clock Barbara was waiting in front of the Greyhound station when Rosemary got off the bus with a suitcase, an armful of books, and an extra coat over her arm.

  “Hi,” said Barbara, taking the suitcase because Rosemary would have difficulty carrying it while she was wearing such high heels. “Why such a big suitcase? You still have a toothbrush at home.” Unexpectedly she felt a little shy with her older sister. Rosemary, who had begun to change when she went away to college, now s
eemed almost like a stranger. She was engaged to be married and would not have that extra toothbrush at home much longer. She looked thinner and more sophisticated, although perhaps this was due, as her mother was sure to say, to dormitory food and so much walking on a hilly campus. But whether Rosemary’s slim figure was due to sophistication or to diet and exercise, Barbara suddenly felt as if her own skirt was too full and her saddle shoes enormous. She felt like a puppy that had not grown up to its feet.

  “The suitcase is full of dirty clothes. Too many to wash by hand and not enough for a load at the Laundromat,” explained Rosemary. “I brought the coat home for Mother to shorten. It’s so long it practically flaps around my ankles.”

  Barbara felt better. This sounded more like the old Rosemary. She wondered how her mother would feel about the laundry and the coat to shorten when she had papers to correct and lessons to plan, but she did not say anything.

  “How’s everybody?” Rosemary asked, avoiding the topic on both their minds.

  “Fine. Gordy’s still a pain in the neck, but otherwise we’re all fine.”

  Rosemary laughed. “You and Gordy are just suffering from sibling rivalry.” Since Rosemary had gone away to college and roomed with a psychology major her conversations were sprinkled with psychology-book phrases.

  “You mean we are quibbling siblings?” asked Barbara.

  “Something like that.” The girls walked in silence until finally Rosemary spoke the question that was on both their minds. “What do you think Dad is going to say when I tell him?”

  Barbara became cautious. She did not feel it was her place to repeat the conversation she had heard between her parents about Rosemary and Greg, particularly since she was not sure to what extent her father had been joking. Still, she wanted somehow to warn her sister that he might object. “Shouldn’t Greg ask Dad for your hand?” she asked, taking refuge behind a half-joking manner.

  “That went out with fans and bustles,” said Rosemary. “Greg is coming over tomorrow night to talk to Dad, but I thought I should break it to him first. What do you think?”