Sister of the Bride

by Beverly Cleary

  And look like a ballerina about to dance Swan Lake, Barbara thought privately. As for carrying a garland of ivy—she only hoped the matter would not be brought up again. It was always best to let Aunt Josie babble on and to hope that most of her ideas would fade away. Next Aunt Josie suggested blue polished cotton with bouquets of hydrangeas. Barbara, who wanted to carry flowers, not shrubbery, did not mind at all when this suggestion was forgotten.

  Then one morning before school, while Barbara was pressing the full skirt she was wearing, without bothering to take it off, her mother announced, “The Amys want to give Rosemary a shower, and we thought next Saturday would be a good time. Rosemary is coming home, anyway, and there won’t be many Saturdays before the wedding.”

  Barbara, who had lifted the front of her skirt over the end of the ironing board and was trying to press it with the iron pointed toward herself, started to protest, Oh, Mother, not the Amys! but caught the words in time. Any shower was sure to be fun, and this was the moment to keep her opinion of the Amys as a group to herself. “Will I be invited?” she asked.

  “Yes. You and Aunt Josie and Gramma, because you are family,” said Mrs. MacLane. “Here, let me press the back of your skirt before you burn yourself.”

  The first party, and she would get to go, thought Barbara ecstatically, as she lifted the back of her skirt over the ironing board and her mother began to run the iron over it. Fun, excitement, presents—lots of presents, because there were at least twenty-five Amys—good things to eat, although half of the Amys would protest that really they shouldn’t, they simply had to lose a few pounds. Barbara could hardly wait for Saturday to come. “Which Amy is giving the shower?” she asked, pulling her pressed skirt from the ironing board and feeling it warm against the backs of her legs.

  “Nancy Bodger,” said Mrs. MacLane. “Dessert and coffee. And it’s to be a miscellaneous shower. We thought you could make up some sort of excuse about wanting to see Tootie about some homework and ask Rosemary to walk over to the Bodgers’ with you.”

  “Mother!” groaned Barbara. “Of all the awful ideas! I try to avoid Tootie.”

  “Well, I can’t tell Nancy that,” Mrs. MacLane pointed out. “And, anyway, Tootie probably won’t even be home. I can’t imagine a boy his age wanting to hang around the house when his mother’s friends are there.”

  This was true. “But Rosemary will know something is up, because she knows how I feel about Tootie,” Barbara reminded her mother.

  “We’ll just have to hope for the best,” answered her mother. “I’ll leave that part of it up to you. It is practically impossible to surprise a bride with a shower, so there’s no point in worrying about it.”

  The plans for the shower rolled along during the week. All the Amys wanted to know what Rosemary might like for a shower gift, and the MacLanes’ phone rang several times a day. It seemed to Barbara that her mother found unnecessary amusement in every conversation. “As near as I can figure out,” she would say, “Rosemary likes anything that is modern, earth colored, and clunky. You know, artsy-craftsy.” Or she might say, “Pink bath towels! Don’t you know pink is too old-fashioned for this generation. Pumpkin color is the thing. Or brown or olive green.” Or, “Sometimes I think they don’t want dishes at all. I think they plan to eat off phonograph records.”

  “Oh, Mother!” Barbara would then protest. “How silly can you get?” But when she answered the telephone herself and an Amy inquired of her what colors Rosemary was collecting for her kitchen and bathroom, she could only say lamely, “Well…she likes earth-colored dishes and pumpkin-colored towels.”

  “Earth-colored dishes!” the Amy invariably exclaimed.

  “Yes,” Barbara would say defensively, “she and Greg know a potter over in Berkeley who is going to make them a set of plates.”

  “Oh…” was the Amy’s usual answer. “Well…perhaps I should get her something for her kitchen.”

  Since Barbara was to be a guest at the shower she, too, was faced with the problem of a gift. She shopped after school one day, even though it meant missing a ride home on Bill’s Vespa. As she wandered through the shops, everything seemed too flowery, too fragile, or too pastel for Rosemary’s taste, but finally in a store specializing in imported furniture and gifts she found a pair of squat terra-cotta candlesticks from Mexico. They seemed to fill all the requirements, and were earth colored, amusing, and just right for a bride and groom whom she could see dining by candlelight. Gradually the picture in her mind faded and reemerged—Barbara and Bill were dining by candlelight. They were students at the university; they had an apartment near the campus….

  Early Saturday afternoon Rosemary arrived in her usual confusion of books and laundry, but this time there was a difference. Rosemary was wearing an engagement ring.

  “Rosemary!” cried Barbara, seizing her sister’s hand as soon as its sparkle caught her eye. “Where did you get that ring?”

  Rosemary laughed. “From Greg, of course, silly. Who else would be giving me a ring?”

  “But—” Barbara held her tongue. It would not do to remind her sister that a short time ago she had dismissed an engagement ring as middle-class. Just be glad she changed her mind, Barbara told herself. “It’s beautiful,” she said. And it was. It was a large stone, full of fire and light, in a plain gold setting. She wished she could keep from wondering how Greg could afford such a ring.

  “It was Greg’s grandmother’s.” Rosemary might have read Barbara’s thoughts. “His mother got it out of the safe-deposit box and brought it over to him. He gave it to me last night after the library closed. Isn’t it beautiful?” She held out her hand and whirled around, as if her ring trailed light behind it like a Fourth of July sparkler.

  Barbara could hold her tongue no longer. “I thought engagement rings were middle-class.”

  “Not if they are heirlooms,” was Rosemary’s airy explanation.

  “Boy. Some hunk of ice,” said Gordy, who had come into the room in time to overhear the conversation. “Doing anything special tonight, Rosie?”

  Barbara shot him a look that said, You be quiet! Honestly, Gordy actually worked at being exasperating.

  “Just studying. Greg is working tonight.” Rosemary was so preoccupied with her own affairs that she missed this bit of family byplay.

  She had a hem that needed repairing, poetry that had to be read for English, and work that must, simply must, be done on that paper on “Plato: Teacher and Theorist.” She had to turn it in by next Wednesday. The professor was an old bear about late papers. She hoped someone had found time to address wedding invitations. Please no little figures on top of the cake. She and Greg had agreed on that. No cardboard wedding bells, either. Just a little nosegay of real flowers to match her wedding bouquet. That much she was sure of. And could Barbara be an angel and find time to type the first part of her paper on Plato? She had a few pages written. They were full of footnotes, which were a nuisance to type, but everybody knew professors adored footnotes, especially if there were a few in French or German. Unfortunately hers were all in English.

  “You don’t sound very thirsty for knowledge,” Barbara observed.

  “Of course I’m thirsty for knowledge,” retorted Rosemary. “It’s just that…well, you know. Plato, when I’m planning a wedding.”

  It’s a good thing the footnotes are in English, thought Barbara, who would much prefer addressing wedding invitations or even doing her own homework to typing a paper on Plato. But type she did, rolling the platen of the typewriter up each time she typed a number to indicate a footnote at the bottom of the page and then forgetting to leave space for the footnote at the bottom of the paper and having to do the page all over again. It was a tiresome chore, doubly tiresome because she was anticipating the shower. She was glad when evening came.

  After dinner Rosemary put on an old housecoat and some woolly bedroom slippers she had left behind when she went away to college and settled down at her desk to attack Plato. She was working so
hard she did not notice that her mother changed her dress and left the house. As Barbara was changing her own dress, she said as casually as she could manage, “Come on, Rosemary, put on a dress and walk over to the Bodgers’ house with me. I have to borrow a book from Tootie.”

  “Can’t,” answered Rosemary.

  This was not encouraging. Barbara pushed the zipper on the back of her dress up as far as she could and then reached down over her shoulder and pulled it up the rest of the way, while she considered what to say next that would not spoil the surprise for Rosemary. “Please, Rosemary. I simply have to get the book, and you know how Dad is about my going out alone at night.”

  “Can’t Mom drive you? I’ll be up half the night as it is.”

  Barbara looked at her sister’s head bent over the circle of light from the study lamp. There was no question about it. She was a problem bride. First she was determined to be practical about her wedding. Now she had to study. “Mom’s gone out on an errand.” As a last resort Barbara could come right out and tell her sister she had to go, because she was about to be the guest of honor at a shower, but only as a last resort. She tried again, and endeavored to keep the urgency out of her voice. “You’ve been grubbing on Plato all afternoon. You need some fresh air.”

  “Can’t, I said.”

  Barbara was getting desperate. The minutes were slipping away, and she was committed to deliver Rosemary to the Bodgers’ front door by eight o’clock. “If you’re going to study late you’ll want a snack. We could stop for a malt or something.” Her voice was more pleading than she had intended.

  Rosemary finally looked up from her desk. “Did you know,” she asked, “that one peanut will provide enough energy for a student to study all evening?”

  That was Rosemary. A scientific answer to everything now that she had gone away to college. “No, I didn’t,” said Barbara crossly. “And what is more, I don’t believe it. I get hungry when I study.”

  “Psychic boredom,” pronounced Rosemary. “You don’t want to study, so you decide you are hungry. All you need is one peanut.”

  Barbara was so exasperated with her sister she felt close to tears. “Oh, you and your psychology. Or, rather, your roommate’s psychology. All I’m asking is that you come on one little errand with me.” Then she added virtuously, “After all, I have been typing for you.”

  Rosemary looked quizzically at her sister. “How come you are borrowing a book from Tootie Bodger?” she wanted to know.

  “I need it,” answered Barbara. “You’ll have to come with me.”

  “Out of thirty-five students in whatever class it is, and you have to borrow a book from Tootie?” Rosemary raised an eyebrow and smiled. “There’s something funny going on around here.”

  “Well…”

  “And Mom has gone out?” persisted Rosemary.

  “Yes.”

  Rosemary laughed and dropped her pencil on her desk. “I get it.”

  “Get what?” Barbara managed wide-eyed innocence.

  Doubt flickered across Rosemary’s face. “At least I think I do. Are the Amys meeting tonight?”

  “What makes you think they are?” countered Barbara, longing to glance at her watch. It must be time to go by now, and she had not even succeeded in getting Rosemary dressed. In a minute she would have to come right out and tell her.

  “Because Mrs. Bodger is a pillar of the Amys, and Mom always does her errands in the daytime, and you would never borrow a book from Tootie of your own free will. If you did, you’d get it after school instead of insisting that I go out in the evening.” Rosemary left her desk and walked toward the closet. “It all adds up. I am about to be surprised by the Amys with a shower. Am I right?”

  Barbara, who was applying lipstick, was not able to answer.

  “Don’t worry,” said Rosemary cheerfully, as she pulled off her housecoat. “I’ll be surprised.”

  At least I didn’t tell, thought Barbara, relieved to see Rosemary dressing.

  “Are we late?” asked Rosemary, as she combed and fluffed her hair.

  “Not if we hurry,” said Barbara, giving up pretense. “Now remember,” she said, when the two girls had left the house and had started the short walk to the Bodgers’, “I’m supposed to ask if Tootie is there, and you sort of stay behind me as if you had just come along for company.”

  “I know,” said Rosemary. “I wouldn’t want to spoil the Amys’ fun by not being surprised.” The girls turned the corner onto the Bodgers’ street. “I suppose Mrs. Bodger’s Secret Pal will do something cute, like leaving her a present in some unexpected place.” At the first of the year each member of the club drew the name of another Amy who was to be her Secret Pal. All through the year the Amys surprised one another with anonymous cards and gifts, and at the annual Christmas party the Pals revealed their identities. Barbara and Rosemary had long poked fun at Secret Pals.

  Barbara giggled. “And I suppose they’ll bring out your presents in the big black umbrella they always use for showers.”

  “And eat rich, gooey cake and talk about their diets,” added Rosemary. “Good old Amys.”

  “Rosemary, promise me you’ll never be an Amy when you get married,” said Barbara.

  “I promise,” said Rosemary solemnly.

  Barbara had an uncomfortable thought. “What will I do if Tootie really is there?”

  “If Tootie is willing to see you in front of all the Amys, you will know it is true love.” Rosemary was obviously amused.

  Barbara groaned.

  “What’s wrong with Tootie?” asked Rosemary. “I think he’s nice. A little gangly, but the type that is sure to mature into something. If you’d take the trouble to really look at Tootie you’d see that he’s a good-looking boy.”

  “Nothing is wrong with Tootie,” answered Barbara. “He just likes me more than I like him. He’s like a big puppy, only he needs to be cheered up all the time.”

  “Ah,” said Rosemary knowingly. “You don’t like him because he makes you feel guilty. You feel you should like him more than you do.”

  Barbara considered this. “You know, I believe you’re right,” she said at last. How wise Rosemary had become since she had roomed with a psychology major.

  “Every girl has a Tootie Bodger in her life,” said Rosemary, “and I suppose every boy has a girl who likes him more than he likes her.”

  Barbara thought guiltily of Bill Cunningham and then felt even more guilty for feeling guilty. Bill liked her. He didn’t give any other girl rides home on his Vespa. Instantly this thought was answered by another. No other girl fed Bill so well.

  The girls were silent as they climbed the steps to the Bodgers’ house, Barbara phrasing the sentence she would utter when the door opened, Rosemary preparing to be surprised.

  “Is Tootie home?” Barbara asked dutifully of Mrs. Bodger when she opened the door. She sincerely hoped he was not.

  “Why, it’s Barbara MacLane! And Rosemary!” Mrs. Bodger successfully feigned surprise. “Come on in, girls.”

  “Surprise! Surprise!” chorused the Amys. “Here comes the bride,” someone sang.

  “Why—it’s the Amys!” Rosemary feigned even greater surprise. “I had no idea—Barbara, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was sworn to secrecy,” said Barbara, admiring her sister’s performance as she faced the room full of her mother’s friends. Although the sisters had always lumped the Amys together, there was actually a variety of women in the room—the Amy who wore leather sandals and wove her own skirts, another who was active in the League of Women Voters, the mother whose calm was never disturbed by her six children, a mother who wanted to write but could not find time, an Amy whose rough hands and deep tan were the result of hours spent in her hillside garden.

  “And there’s Aunt Josie! And Gramma!” exclaimed Rosemary, surprised, radiant, and bewildered all at once. “Mother, how ever did you manage not to breathe a word of this?”

  As Mrs. Bodger took the girls’ coats Ba
rbara observed that her mother had been right. Tootie was nowhere in sight. She felt her aunt’s tape measure eye slide over her, making her wish she had not eaten so many brownies and pecan crispies. Quickly sitting down on the floor with some of the younger Amys, she counted the house and prepared to enjoy herself. Twenty-eight, not counting Rosemary. A lot of loot. She leaned back and waited for Mrs. Bodger to drag out the big black-cotton umbrella loaded with gifts.

  “What a beautiful ring!” cried one of the Amys, and Rosemary, in answer to the clamor, held out her left hand as if she dripped jewels from every fingertip.

  “Oh no, Mrs. Baylis, let me sit on the floor,” said Rosemary to one of the Amys who was offering her the seat of honor after everyone had admired her engagement ring. She sank gracefully to the floor near her grandmother’s feet. She smiled around the room at the members of the club and managed not to look expectant. Barbara admired her for this ability. If Barbara were the bride, she would probably be looking down the hall watching for the presents to be brought on. Mrs. Bodger sat as composed as if there were to be no presents.

  “Rosemary, tell us about your young man,” someone was saying, when the conversation was interrupted by the sound of an alarm clock ringing nearby.

  “That is for you, Rosemary,” said Mrs. Bodger. “Find the clock, and you will find your first present.”

  What a typically Amy idea, thought Barbara, controlling her desire to giggle.

  All the Amys laughed and Rosemary right along with them. She was a picture of pretty confusion as she stood up and looked in the direction of the sound. She located the clock and the gift behind some books in the bookcase and pulled them out. “Oh—how do I turn this thing off?” She examined the chattering clock in her hand.