Sister of the Bride

by Beverly Cleary

  “Well,” began Barbara, choosing her words with care, “Mother did wonder if maybe you and Greg were getting serious.”

  “That’s good. Then they shouldn’t be too surprised.” Rosemary seemed relieved. “What about Dad? What did he say?”

  “Oh, you know Dad,” answered Barbara as airily as she could under the circumstances.

  “That’s the trouble,” said Rosemary. “He must have said something. Come on, what was it?”

  “I…I don’t remember exactly,” lied Barbara. “Some silly remark about your cooking or something. And he did mention your grades.”

  “Oh.” Rosemary put a lot of expression into that one syllable. Comprehension, disappointment, apprehension. She laughed nervously. “Well, I guess it was a good thing I had to give a debate in high school. Maybe it will help now.”

  “Did you win?” asked Barbara tactlessly.

  “No,” Rosemary said with a sigh, “but I was trying to prove that a twelve-month school year would be better than a nine-month year. It was pretty hopeless.”

  Barbara shifted the suitcase from her right hand to her left hand and back again. The pecking of Rosemary’s heels on the sidewalk was the only sound until she said, “Maybe things really were better back in the days when a man had to ask a girl’s father for her hand in marriage.”

  At home Rosemary spent the time before dinner at her desk, alternately staring into space and trying to concentrate on her French with her fingers in her ears while Gordy sang, “I’ve got twenty-nine links of chain around my leg” in the next room. Dinner at the MacLanes’ that evening was pleasant enough, even though Barbara and Rosemary tried to conceal their nervousness. Rosemary appreciated a change from dormitory diet and said so. Fresh peas! How absolutely heavenly! And whole fresh strawberries, not mushy frozen berries spread thin in vanilla ice cream the way they were served at school. Mrs. MacLane smiled with pleasure at her daughter’s praise.

  When Barbara had cleared the dishes from the table, Mr. MacLane peeled the cellophane from his cigar, leaned back in his chair, and said, “Don’t you think you should have stayed in Berkeley to study when you have midterms coming up?” he asked.

  Rosemary rolled the edge of her place mat back and forth between her fingers. “I brought my books with me.”

  “Come on, Gordy, help me with the dishes,” said Barbara hastily, although she longed to stay in the dining room. But Rosemary had a right to a little privacy in her own house. Anyway, if her father acted the way she thought he would, they would be able to hear every word he said in the kitchen. Gordy, somewhat to her surprise, actually followed Barbara into the kitchen, and he closed the swinging door behind him.

  “I don’t have to help with the dishes,” Gordy said. “I just don’t want to be around when Dad starts preaching to Rosemary about her grades. He might start in on me next.”

  “Oh, come on, Gordy,” coaxed Barbara. “It won’t hurt you for once. You can give the scraps to your cat.” Buster was underfoot, as he always was when someone was in the kitchen.

  While Barbara scraped the plates, Gordy presented a pea to Buster on the tip of his finger. He found a bit of meat also, and then to Barbara’s surprise he actually picked up a dish towel. Gordy was so unpredictable. He could just as easily have gone into his room, shut the door, and started plinking on his guitar.

  Barbara was torn between making a normal amount of noise in the kitchen and trying to be quiet enough to hear the conversation in the dining room. She was suddenly aware of a long silence on the other side of the swinging door. Then her mother said in such a sad voice, “Oh, Rosemary, you are so young,” that it sent an unexpected pang through Barbara. It hurt to know her mother was sad.

  Mr. MacLane did not sound sad at all as he said, “Married? At your age? Marriage isn’t a date for a prom, you know.”

  Mrs. MacLane said, “I’m sure Greg must be a nice boy if you want to marry him, but we don’t know a thing about his family.”

  Rosemary was trying to be patient. “I’m eighteen, Mother, and Greg is twenty-four. He isn’t a boy. And I am not marrying his family. I am marrying Greg.”

  There was a snort from Mr. MacLane. “You may think you aren’t marrying his family, but—”

  Barbara had to start running the dishwater or have her family wonder why she was being so quiet. She turned the faucet on full force to fill the pan as quickly as possible. When she turned off the water she strained to hear.

  “But Dad, we love each other,” Rosemary was saying. “That’s why we want to get married.”

  So the debate was on.

  Gordy looked incredulous. “Did you hear that?” he asked hoarsely.

  Barbara tried to wave him into silence with a soapy hand, but he was not to be silenced. “What does she want to go and get married for?” he asked in a whisper.

  “You heard her,” said Barbara.

  “A-ah, love. That stuff,” muttered Gordy, as he closely examined the saucers that had been cleared from the table. Those that looked clean he shelved in the cupboard.

  “Gordy, you stop that.” Barbara was even more impatient with her brother than usual. “You aren’t supposed to put dishes back in the cupboard without washing them.”

  “Why not?” asked Gordy. “They look clean to me.”

  “Yes, but they have been handled,” Barbara answered in a whisper, trying at the same time to catch what was being said in the dining room.

  “But Dad, what do you have against Greg?” Rosemary was demanding to know.

  “I don’t have anything against Greg,” said Mr. MacLane. “I think you are too young and too impractical for marriage.”

  “Yes, Rosemary,” said Mrs. MacLane. “We have nothing against Greg. We just think you should wait until you are older.”

  “But I told you. Greg isn’t eighteen,” Rosemary was saying. “He’s twenty-four, and he has his degree and is working for his teaching credential.”

  “And what about your education?” Mr. MacLane demanded.

  Gordy dropped a handful of silverware on the floor, gathered it up, and returned it with a splash to Barbara’s dishwater. Barbara glared at him.

  “Well, I didn’t do it on purpose,” he said defensively.

  The voices in the dining room were rising.

  “But I told you. I am going back to school while he gets his general secondary credential. That’s why we’re going to summer school—so we won’t have to carry so many courses next fall. Greg wants me to finish college. He believes women should use their minds.”

  “You’re only making a C average now. How do you think you’ll manage when you have to keep house? Be practical for once in your life.”

  “I am being practical. Don’t you see? We’ll be settled then. It will be easier to study.”

  “Settled!” Mr. MacLane fairly snorted. “Keeping house in some two-room apartment. You call that settled?”

  “Yes.” Rosemary was stubborn.

  “Well, I don’t.” Mr. MacLane was equally stubborn.

  “Didn’t Mother trail you around from one army camp to another when you were first married?” demanded Rosemary. “She didn’t even have two rooms. I’ve heard her tell about that place in Texas where you had one room and shared a kitchen with eight other wives. Did you call that any way to start a marriage?”

  That’s a good point, thought Barbara. It must have been effective, because her father did not answer immediately.

  “Boy,” said Gordy. “They’re sure going at it.”

  “Be quiet.” Barbara rubbed a scouring pad around the inside of a pan to relieve her feelings. Her happy dream of a beautiful wedding for Rosemary was fading away. It was all so serious now. And that was right, of course. Marriage was serious. But couldn’t they be serious and happy at the same time? Couldn’t they agree about a few things? If only her mother did not sound so sad. And if only her father would stop raising his voice. Of course he was concerned about Rosemary’s future, but he did not have to shout, did he?
Barbara felt as if she could not bear it any longer. She wanted to weep into the dishwater, not only for her sister but for her mother and father, too.

  “I told you Greg has a job,” Rosemary was saying. “A perfectly good job in the Radiation Laboratory. He files things and looks up things at the library for the physicists, and he’s good at it. The university raised his pay. We aren’t going to starve.”

  “And can he afford to pay the orthodontist twenty-five dollars a month?” Mr. MacLane demanded. “Have you thought of that little expense?”

  “No…I haven’t.” Crestfallen, Rosemary faltered.

  How awful, thought Barbara as she poured out the dishwater. To want to get married when you are still having your teeth straightened. It must be humiliating to have part of your childhood left over. And she could not help wondering if Greg really could afford to pay Rosemary’s orthodontist. If she stopped wearing retainers now, her teeth might go crooked again, and she would have to start all over. That would be expensive. She was sure Greg could not afford it. Not and pay rent and buy groceries and a lot of other things Barbara had not thought about until now.

  Mrs. MacLane came through the swinging door. Her face was flushed and she looked worried. “You children run along to the movies,” she said. “You can take the money out of my purse, and Barbara, you can drive the car.”

  “I don’t want to go to the movies,” protested Gordy. “I’m working up a new arrangement for the trio.”

  “Come on, Gordy,” said Barbara, distressed by her mother’s flushed and anxious face.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. MacLane, leaving no doubt in her voice. Gordy was to go to the movies.

  “Okay, Ma,” said Gordy, and his mother was too preoccupied to tell her son not to call her Ma.

  Barbara knew better than to protest that she did not want to go to the movies either. No girl wanted to be seen in public on Friday night with her younger brother, especially when that brother was wearing sneakers. She considered saying she would not go unless Gordy took off the sneakers and put on shoes, but in the interests of family peace she held her tongue. She would keep her eyes away from his feet and hope that everyone else did, too.

  “And what about children?” Mr. MacLane was demanding as Barbara and Gordy were leaving the house. “Have you thought about them?”

  “Of course we have thought about children,” was Rosemary’s heated answer.

  “Whew!” said Gordy as he closed the back door.

  “Whew is right,” said Barbara, in rare agreement with her brother.

  “I don’t see why we have to be shoved out just because Dad and Rosemary are going at one another,” said Gordy. “I don’t see why old Rosemary has to go and get married anyway.”

  Barbara inserted the key in the ignition, a gesture that had been permitted her for only a few months. “Because she’s in love, that’s why. And you won’t be losing a sister. You’ll be gaining a brother-in-law.” And so will I, she thought. A real live brother-in-law was a detail she had omitted from her dreams of a wedding in the family.

  Gordy did not appear to be amused at her weak attempt at humor, and they rode in silence down the hill to the main street. Barbara felt embarrassed to be alone with Gordy, since they had quarreled so much lately, and she suspected her brother was experiencing much the same feeling. Barbara searched for a diagonal parking space that she could slide into with ease, but found none. She turned a corner and found an empty space that unfortunately would require her to park parallel under Gordy’s critical eye. Gordy, sensitive because he was the only member of the family too young for a driver’s license, was inclined to make caustic remarks about Barbara’s driving whenever he got a chance. Nervously Barbara pulled up beside the car parked ahead of the empty space. She put the car in reverse and started turning the wheel while she stepped lightly on the gas. The car moved faster than she had anticipated and banged the bumper of the one behind.

  “That’s right,” said Gordy. “Take off a couple of fenders while you’re at it.”

  “Oh, be quiet,” snapped Barbara, as she shifted and tried again. She felt better, and her embarrassment at being alone with her brother was gone. Gordy was back to normal again.

  Barbara and Gordy continued to feel shoved aside the rest of the weekend. When they returned from the movie, a gloomy Italian film neither had wanted to see, Mr. MacLane was sitting in the living room puffing on another cigar and staring at the cold ashes in the fireplace. Mrs. MacLane was nowhere in sight, and when Barbara went to her own room she found Rosemary, her face red and blotched from crying, sitting in front of the dressing table putting her hair up on rollers.

  “Pretty awful?” Barbara asked softly.

  Rosemary nodded. Two tears spilled from her red-rimmed eyes, slid down her cheeks, and plopped into a pile of bobby pins. She looked so miserable Barbara felt like crying herself. Rosemary wound a roller into a lock of hair as two more tears slid down her cheeks and into the bobby pins.

  “If you keep that up your bobby pins will rust,” said Barbara with a shaky laugh.

  Rosemary reached for a soggy wad of Kleenex and mopped her eyes.

  “He…he didn’t talk you out of it, did he?” ventured Barbara.

  Rosemary shook her head.

  “You could marry him anyway, no matter what Dad says,” Barbara reminded her sister. “You are eighteen.”

  Rosemary looked at her own despairing face in the mirror and let out a quavering breath, half sob, half sigh. “B-but I want everything to be h-happy,” she managed to say.

  And so did Barbara. A wedding should be a time of joy, and any tears that fell should not be the kind Rosemary was shedding into her bobby pins. They should be tears of happiness. Barbara prepared for bed quickly. After she had turned out the light she heard her mother and father talking long and earnestly in their room. A muffled sniff came from Rosemary’s bed. Barbara began to dread the next day.

  On Saturday the argument continued. Rosemary said, Couldn’t her father see? Times were so uncertain that she and Greg wanted to get married before something terrible happened to the world. Mr. MacLane wanted to know when in the history of the world had times ever been certain. This argument took place at breakfast. By lunchtime the argument had swung around to Mr. MacLane’s saying, “And I suppose you are going to tell me two can live as cheaply as one.”

  “Certainly not,” was Rosemary’s answer, “but two can live as cheaply as two. Greg will be able to work more hours by not taking as many courses. We have it all figured out. The extra money he will earn will equal the allowance I have been getting.”

  Please, Dad, thought Barbara, please, please don’t bring up Rosemary’s orthodontist.

  “Two married people cannot live as cheaply as two single people,” argued Mr. MacLane. “A married couple is equal to more than the sum of its parts. A couple needs to carry life insurance and hospital insurance. They need to think of the future in a way that single people do not. They need pots and pans and furniture—”

  “But think of the saving in rent,” interrupted Rosemary. “Oh, Dad, what’s the use? You talk to Greg when he comes over this evening. He’ll tell you. He’ll make you understand.”

  Mrs. MacLane sent Gordy out to mow the lawn and told Barbara to go downtown and buy some thread and seam tape, so she could shorten Rosemary’s coat.

  “I’m coming with you,” said Rosemary. And as soon as the girls were out of the house she said to Barbara, “Give me all your small change. I’ve got to phone Greg. I can’t let him walk in tonight without any warning.”

  The girls stopped at a glass telephone booth in a service station. Rosemary stepped inside, closed the door, and put through her call, while Barbara watched the expressions that moved across her sister’s face. Joy, briefly, when she heard Greg’s voice, anxiety, earnestness, a tender smile, and, finally, calm. She emerged from the booth considerably more serene than she had entered it. “You know,” she mused, “maybe Greg is right. He said probably most fathers ac
ted this way when their first daughter got married. And he said not to worry. He will talk to Dad tonight. He will make him see our side.”

  “I hope he’s right about fathers acting this way over the first wedding in the family,” said Barbara. “I wouldn’t want to go through this again when I get married.” At the same time she thought, Poor Greg, wait till Dad gets hold of him.

  “That’s the way it has always been,” said Rosemary. “I always have to argue about things with Dad first, and then you come along and want to do the same thing at the same age, and he doesn’t even fuss. Remember how he acted when I first started wearing lipstick and bought my first pair of high heels? And two years later you did the same thing, and he didn’t even seem to notice.”

  “You sound like a regular trailblazer,” said Barbara. “Pocahontas leading Lewis and Clark.”

  “You mean Sacagawea.”

  “Well, some Indian.”

  This seemed to cheer Rosemary, but Barbara was not so sure that marriage was in the same class with lipstick and high heels. They bought the seam tape and thread in the dime store, and when they returned home, Rosemary went to her room and spent the rest of the afternoon studying. Barbara tried to settle down with some irregular French verbs, but she had trouble concentrating on them. She would think she was memorizing the tenses only to discover that, in the back of her mind, she had been concentrating, not on a verb, but on Rosemary.

  By dinnertime both Rosemary and her father seemed calmer, but neither one said much at the table. Mrs. MacLane looked weary and somehow older. The rice had a slightly scorched taste, but no one mentioned it. Only Gordy seemed really hungry. They all understood that Mrs. MacLane had not been able to put her mind on her cooking. Dessert was canned apricots and Girl Scout cookies, a further sign that Mrs. MacLane had no interest in food that evening.

  After dinner Gordy, with an air of escaping, left the house with his guitar to practice with the other two members of his trio. Barbara wished she could escape, too, and wondered if she should have accepted Tootie’s invitation to the movies. She was torn with a feeling, which was rapidly becoming familiar, of wanting to get away and of not wanting to miss anything. Not long after Gordy left, the doorbell rang, and the two sisters’ eyes met in one tense, understanding look. “I guess I’ll go study or something,” said Barbara.