Sister of the Bride

by Beverly Cleary

  “Wait and say hello,” whispered Rosemary, as she opened the door for Greg.

  Barbara was surprised when Greg stepped into the room, because he looked older than she had remembered him and much more serious. There was an air of determination about him that she had not noticed before. She also observed that he had a fresh haircut, and she was touched by this. Poor Greg. That haircut told her that in spite of his seeming assurance, he was anxious, too. Rosemary straightened his tie, which really did not need straightening, in a wifely, possessive gesture.

  “Hello, Barbara,” he said, accepting Rosemary’s gesture with a smile.

  “Hello, Greg,” answered Barbara, with a reticence she had not felt when she had thought of him as just another one of her sister’s dates. “Well…I guess I had better go study.”

  In her room Barbara sat down cross-legged on her bed with her French verbs once more. She heard her mother and father greeting Greg, and for the second time that day her mind was not on her studying. She went over the present subjunctive and the imperfect subjunctive of avoir, only to have them slip right out of her mind without a trace. If Rosemary’s affairs were not settled one way or another soon, she would probably flunk out of school, because she seemed incapable of learning anything anymore. She closed her book. This was a waste of time, but she had to find something to do as long as she was trapped in her room. She decided to paint her fingernails, something she rarely did anymore, because she considered the task tiresome and a waste of time.

  Barbara opened Rosemary’s drawer and found an assortment of bottles she had left behind when she went away to college. She examined the different shades and names and selected a bottle labeled “Chili Bean.” From the living room came the sound of her father’s voice speaking seriously. Barbara bit nervously at a hangnail, remembered she was supposed to be manicuring her nails, not biting them, and clipped the hangnail off with the nail scissors. Then she began to smooth her nails with an emery board in long, careful strokes. She had the whole evening before her and only ten fingers to work on.

  The sound of voices from the living room was steady. Now Greg was speaking. Now Mr. MacLane. Neither raised his voice, which Barbara felt was a good sign. Never had nails been painted with such meticulous care. Each was filed to a perfect curve, each cuticle was pushed back until perfect half-moons showed. The Chili Bean polish was tried, rejected, removed with cotton and polish remover, and replaced with a different red. Still the voices murmured on, now Rosemary, now her mother, but most often Greg and Mr. MacLane.

  Barbara’s mouth felt dry. She wished she dared leave the bedroom to get a drink of water, but she did not want to risk interrupting the conversation at what might be a crucial moment. She finally settled on a third shade of polish, called “Tickled Pink,” and began to paint her nails in careful strokes, sweeping from the half-moon to the tip. She worked slowly and carefully to pass the time. When all ten nails were painted she wafted her fingertips through the air to dry them. The voices continued.

  Having nothing else to do, Barbara kicked off her slippers and went to work on her toenails with the same careful strokes she had used on her fingernails. This is a stupid way to spend an evening, she thought impatiently. No matter what Rosemary did, her life would go on, but once having started her toenails she felt she had to finish. When the job was completed she lay back on the bed and fanned her legs back and forth to dry the polish, wishing as she did so that she had been stricter with herself about concentrating on those unlearned French verbs, which now remained to spoil her Sunday.

  A sudden burst of laughter from the living room made Barbara sit up, tense and listening. This was the first encouraging sign since Rosemary’s telephone call last Tuesday. There was more conversation and another burst of laughter. What could be going on out there? She longed so much to know that she tiptoed across the room and pressed her ear to the door.

  Then Rosemary’s heels came clicking down the hall. Barbara skipped away from the door, sat down on the bed, and began innocently to fan her feet once more just as Rosemary burst into the room. Her pink cheeks and sparkling eyes told Barbara all she needed to know. Everything was fine. There was going to be a wedding, after all.

  “Greg is going to drive me back to school tonight, so I can get more studying done tomorrow. Oh, I’m so happy I could die,” whispered Rosemary, closing the door behind her.

  “Oh, Rosemary!” Barbara was so happy for her sister she could find no words equal to the occasion and could only repeat, “Oh, Rosemary!”

  “Greg was marvelous with Dad—very man-to-man and everything.” Rosemary gathered her books together to take back to school. “He pointed out that he had his degree and could earn enough to support us both while he got his teaching credential and that I wouldn’t have to work. And he said he wanted me to go on to school. I think that made a big impression on Dad—that Greg was really eager for me to go on to school. But what really got him was when Greg said he wanted me to bring up my grades. That really won Dad over. And then Mom stepped in and said she was happy I had found someone as fine as Greg.”

  “What did Dad say then?” asked Barbara curiously, as Rosemary pulled her coat from the closet.

  “He said he thought I was pretty young and he would rather we waited, but as long as our minds were made up, he guessed there was nothing he could say except to wish us happiness.”

  “Are you going to wash Greg’s socks?” Barbara asked so suddenly she was surprised by her own question.

  “How romantic! Is that all that interests you?” asked Rosemary with amusement. “I don’t know. I never thought about it.” As she slipped into her coat, she appeared to be considering the matter. “Maybe I could buy him nylon socks, and when I rinsed out my nylons, he could rinse out his.”

  “I guess that takes care of Greg’s socks,” said Barbara with a giggle.

  “I don’t know. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll wash them with loving care and stretch them on stretchers.” Rosemary paused in front of the mirror to pull a comb through her hair. She was lovely to look at in her relief and her joy. She lingered a moment, struck by her own radiance. Then she turned her back to the mirror to face her sister. “There’s just one thing that worries me,” she said seriously.

  “What?” asked Barbara, thinking of that monthly bill from the orthodontist.

  “What on earth will I do about putting up my hair after I’m married?” asked Rosemary. And without waiting for an answer she was gone.

  Chapter 4

  The Monday morning after it was decided there was to be a wedding in the family after all, Barbara and her mother were hurrying to change all the sheets in the house before they left for school. Barbara had removed her stuffed animals, had pulled the spread and blankets from her bed, and was about to remove the sheets when Buster came running down the hall to spring into the middle of the bed.

  “You old pussycat,” said Barbara. “Do you think I’m going to play change-the-sheet with you?” With Gordy out of the house she could speak to the cat with a sort of grudging affection as she folded the sheet over him and rolled him up in a loose bundle. Buster began to kick with his hind legs. Barbara poked at the bundle. Buster kicked back through the sheet. It was a game they played once a week.

  “Don’t you think that’s a little hard on the sheets?” asked Mrs. MacLane, who was waiting, clean sheet in hand.

  Barbara rolled Buster over inside the sheet. He poked out one black velvet paw and patted at her. “Yes, I guess it is,” she agreed, “but Buster would be disappointed if we didn’t play his game.” She unrolled the sheet and dumped the cat on the floor, where he immediately began to wash his rumpled fur.

  Barbara helped her mother unfold the clean sheet and spread it on the bed. They were alone in the house, and it seemed like a good moment for confidences. Barbara could contain her curiosity no longer. “Mother, what kind of a wedding do you think Rosemary will want?” she asked, as they spread the second sheet on top of the first.

  “
A simple one I hope.” Mrs. MacLane leaned over to smooth out the wrinkles. “There’s so little time to make plans. I do wish they would decide to wait until the end of summer session, so we would have a little more time, but their minds are made up. I guess we should be thankful she has settled on someone as fine as Greg.”

  “I know.” Barbara knew her mother was thinking of some of the other boys Rosemary had liked. There was Jack, who couldn’t graduate with his class in high school because he flunked English but who had his own yellow convertible. What their father had had to say about him! And Roger, who was the handsomest boy in school and who combed his hair in front of a mirror every chance he got. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who is the fairest of them all,” Barbara had chanted whenever his name had come into the conversation, and the whole family always answered, “Roger!” Roger did not last long. Then there was Humphrey, who ran the eight-eighty in one minute, fifty-six seconds and who never treated Rosemary to Cokes or malts because he was in training. Old Fleetfoot the family called him. For several years boys had come and boys had gone, and Rosemary had gone steady with them all.

  “This spread isn’t even,” said Mrs. MacLane. “You had better pull it over your way a few inches.”

  Barbara did as she was told and then began to arrange her stuffed animals. At sixteen she still loved the fat curve of Pooh Bear’s stomach, and she hugged him before she laid him against her pillow. “But didn’t Rosemary say a single word about the wedding?” she persisted, setting the stuffed penguin and the pink velvet pig beside him.

  “Not a word. As soon as your father relented and wished them happiness, she and Greg left.” Mrs. MacLane bundled up the sheets that had been removed from the bed. “I hope she phones soon and gives us some clue to her plans. Six weeks is not a very long time for planning a wedding. And we must do something about Greg’s family right away.”

  Barbara glanced out the window at the sky, saw that it was clear, pulled a sweater out of a drawer, gathered up her books, said good-bye to her mother, and left the house without interrupting her train of thought. Rosemary was eighteen, Barbara was sixteen. That was a difference of only two years. Maybe two years from now…Barbara, who had never had any very specific thought about her own marriage, began to wonder. Maybe at last she had found out what she wanted to do—get married in two years like Rosemary.

  Two short years were not much over seven hundred days. Thinking in terms of days instead of years made Barbara feel as if she had not much time left. If she was going to get married in seven hundred days she should think about falling in love, and the sooner the better. Right now. Today. Until this minute she had thought of falling in love as something that would happen a long time from now. She had felt sorry for the girls she had known who had married right after graduation from high school. She even felt a little pity for a girl at school who was wearing a real engagement ring, because it was such a short step from a ring to a lifetime of dish washing. Barbara, unlike some of the other girls, considered the engaged girl a poor old has-been, with nothing much left to live for. But now, recalling Rosemary’s radiance and—to be perfectly honest—the attention she was going to get, Barbara was beginning to change her attitude and to wonder if there was something she could do to speed up love. All she needed was a boy.

  Tootie Bodger would not do. Definitely not. Of course Tootie would probably fill out and cheer up as he grew older, but Barbara did not want to wait that long. She wanted to fall in love now, in the springtime while the hills were green. She wanted to fall in love while Rosemary was having so much fun planning her wedding.

  And so Barbara took particular care to avoid Tootie, lest he ask her for another date or she become known as Tootie’s girl because she was seen with him around school. She ducked in one door of the library and out the other when she saw his head above the crowd in the hall. If she could go to class a roundabout way she did so. Once she even ran up the staircase plainly labeled Down only.” She did succeed in avoiding Tootie, but the task was so time-consuming she could only smile and say hello to other boys as she scurried out of Tootie’s path.

  After a couple of days of this Barbara began to feel guilty about the way she was treating Tootie who, after all, was really a very nice boy. She allowed him to catch up with her between classes one day when she knew they would have only a few minutes for talking. Then, eager to prevent him from asking her to go to the movies again, she chattered so lightly and brightly about nothing at all that he did not have a chance to say anything and, looking puzzled and hurt, left her at the door of her classroom. Barbara felt guiltier than ever. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

  While Barbara dodged Tootie at school, at home she wondered with her mother about Rosemary’s wedding plans. She and her mother tried to guess what sort of wedding she would want, and Barbara brought a book on wedding etiquette home from the library. They took turns reading it and exclaiming over bits of information they had not known before. “Mother!” Barbara cried. “It says here that if the bride wants to wear a face veil, it can be held in place by a basting thread, and when it is time for her to remove it, her attendant pulls the basting thread. How perfectly ghastly. I know I could never find a basting thread in all that tulle.”

  “I never heard of such a thing,” said Mrs. MacLane. “A face veil is usually just folded back over the bride’s head. Anyway, I doubt if Rosemary chooses to wear one. And, of course, she may not choose you to be her maid of honor. She may want to ask Millie.”

  She wouldn’t do that, thought Barbara, and began to speculate about the other attendants. Probably her roommate, Millie, who was a rather stolid, untidy girl. Barbara could not understand why Rosemary was fond of Millie. And perhaps Greg’s sister, Anne, the physical education major. And then there was their cousin Elinor, but perhaps she was too young. She was only twelve.

  When Mrs. MacLane had a turn at the book she read aloud menus for wedding receptions and despaired over the elaborate salads and sandwiches. She was the kind of cook whose gelatine salads would never come out of their molds without breaking. “Why doesn’t Rosemary phone?” Mrs. MacLane asked several times a day. “We can’t plan a thing until we at least know what time of day she wants the wedding. And I would like to know what she wants us to do about Greg’s family.” She hesitated to make the call herself, because Rosemary was not ready to have all the girls hear her discuss her wedding plans.

  By Friday afternoon, as Barbara skipped out of the side entrance of the school building to avoid being walked home by Tootie, she felt that the whole week was a disappointment. She had not fallen in love, and the wedding had not been planned. What a waste of time. She decided to walk down Main Street instead of her usual street, because Tootie’s legs were long and he could quickly catch up with her if she followed her usual route. Also, it had rained during the day, and since she had forgotten to bring a scarf for her hair, she could dodge under some of the awnings on Main Street.

  And that was how it happened that Barbara was halted in a spring rain by one of Bayview’s three traffic lights on a Friday afternoon on Main Street. A sound truck, blaring Chattanooga Choochoo in the center lane of traffic, forced Barbara’s attention to turn toward the street. The sign on the truck carried a cartoon of a horse and the words, “Don’t horse around. Call Joe’s T.V. Repair today.”

  Between Barbara and the sound truck was a boy named Bill Cunningham, sitting on a motor scooter. Barbara, who knew him only slightly, could not help smiling at him, because he was riding under a large black-cotton umbrella, its handle stuck down the back of his neck to free his hands for driving the Vespa.

  “On track forty-nine at a quarter to nine,” screeched the sound truck.

  As Barbara stood in the rain smiling at Bill, he startled her by taking his right hand off the handlebar, holding it out to her, and saying dramatically above the noise of the truck, “Barbara! They are playing our song. Shall we dance?”

  Barbara burst out laughing, it was all so crazy. The idea
that she and Bill Cunningham had a song, particularly Chattanooga Choochoo, was ridiculous, because she barely knew him and had never danced with him at all. Not that she wouldn’t want to if she ever got a chance. Bill was a very attractive boy, good-looking, intelligent, confident. The light changed from red to green, and the truck driver, pulling Chattanooga Choochoo after him, moved on down the street. Barbara and Bill did not.

  “Hop on,” said Bill. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

  “Why not?” answered Barbara, and glanced down at the straight skirt she was wearing that day. This time it was her own, not a castoff of Rosemary’s.

  “You can ride sidesaddle,” said Bill.

  Still amused by the whole situation, Barbara stepped over the water in the gutter and ducked under the black umbrella. With her books clutched in one arm she perched on the narrow passenger’s seat behind Bill.

  “Hang on,” directed Bill.

  Barbara grasped the low handle in front of her. Just before the signal changed to red once more, Bill started the scooter putting across the intersection. It all happened that fast, in the interval of one green light.

  Barbara squealed. Her perch was more precarious than she had expected, and she felt unbalanced riding sidesaddle with a load of books in one arm. The pavement flew beneath her in a wet black streak that made her dizzy.

  Bill reached behind his back for her hand, which he grasped and pulled around in front of him so that her arm was encircling his waist. “Don’t be bashful,” he flung back over his shoulder. “That handle is too low to be any good.”

  Barbara felt embarrassed at having her arm around Bill’s waist, but there was nothing she could do about it now except press her cheek against the umbrella handle at the back of his neck. Barbara MacLane, of all people, riding sidesaddle on a Vespa through the streets of Bayview—it was crazy and it was fun.