Father of the Bride

by Edward Streeter

  Mrs. Banks pooh-poohed this. She declared that, in spite of such journalistic cynicism, this notice was going to be letter-perfect. It was written, read, rewritten, reread, submitted to the Dunstan family, revised and resubmitted. There were eventually so many drafts lying around that Mr. Banks couldn’t remember which was the one that had been finally approved.

  Kay was the only person who showed no interest. As long as they spelled her name with a “K” and not with a “C” she was satisfied.

  Mr. Banks finally took what he hoped was the right draft down to the office to have Miss Bellamy make six copies.

  Miss Bellamy was more excited about the wedding than any of the principals. She had been his secretary for fifteen years, during which she had devoted so much time to his personal as well as his business affairs that she had found no opportunity to get married herself. As a compensation she had gradually assumed remote, but nonetheless complete, control of the Banks family.

  In a crisis such as this, therefore, Miss Bellamy naturally felt the weight of her responsibility. She had a real affection for Mr. Banks, but it was that of a mother for a backward son. Mrs. Banks she secretly regarded as a cultured incompetent. She had no illusions, therefore, that anything about this whole affair would be handled properly or efficiently, but she was out to do her best to pick up the pieces.

  Miss Bellamy made several editorial changes in the copy without even referring the matter to Mr. Banks. Then she typed it with unerring speed. “We must read this back,” she said. “There mustn’t be any mistakes at this point.” She read while Mr. Banks stared unseeingly at the original with fierce concentration.

  “There,” he said. “That’s one job done as it should be.” Miss Bellamy nodded understandingly. She was a great comfort to Mr. Banks. Although much too tactful to make any direct comment, she always made it quite clear to him that she knew what he was up against.

  The following morning he was out of bed before the alarm went off. The morning paper lay on the door mat. He glanced up and down the shaded length of Maple Drive. Not a soul was in sight. His neighbors slumbered, unconscious of the bombshell about to explode among them.

  Sitting on the bottom steps of the front stairs, he turned to the Society Section. There was Kay’s face, smiling at him, and in the news column next to the picture the headline “Catherine Banks to Wed ex-Marine Officer.”

  He looked again. Unfortunately he had not been mistaken. It was spelled with a “C” instead of a “K.” That damn fool editor. He’d go around and give him (or was it her?) a piece of his mind. In the meanwhile he had the home team to cope with.

  Unfortunately, he had not been mistaken.

  He padded in his bare feet to the little room behind the stairs known as “The Office.” Two of Miss Bellamy’s copies of the release were lying on the desk. He had to force himself to look. “Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Banks of Fairview Manor announce the engagement of their daughter Catherine.” How could Miss Bellamy! Then he remembered that he had read it back with her.

  “Is it in?” Mrs. Bank was standing in the doorway.

  “Yes, but they’ve garbled it up just as Uncle Charlie said they would. They’ve spelled Kay’s name wrong.”

  “Oh, Stanley! The one thing the child—”

  “I know. I know. But what can you do? That’s labor for you. They don’t care any more. It’s the reason the country’s in such a mess.”

  He climbed the stairs noiselessly, hoping that Kay might sleep until he was safely on the train to town.

  • • •

  A modern wedding is somewhat like a new theatrical production. Once the cast has been decided upon, the next thing is to determine whether it is to be Big Theater or Little Theater and then fill the house.

  Kay opened the argument at dinner. “I’ll tell you one thing,” she said. “This is going to be a small wedding and a small reception.”

  In theory this should have been music to Mr. Banks, but his trained ear sensed a discord. “I was talking to Jack Gibbons the other day,” he said. “Jack’s married off four daughters and he says weddings are either confined to the bosom of the family or held in Madison Square Garden.”

  “Well, mine is neither,” said Kay. “I’m going to have my own friends and it’s not going to be a business convention.”

  “I suppose I can’t ask any of my friends,” said Ben indignantly. “I suppose Tommy and I can’t have—”

  “Who said anything about a business convention?” interrupted Mr. Banks. “All I’m saying is you’ll end up with either thirty or three hundred.”

  “Three hundred!” There was a suggestion of hysteria in Kay’s voice. “Pops, if you mean that you’re craçy. I know what you and Mom want. You want every old fogy in town so that you can hear them say, ‘Yes, she really was too lovely. And the most beautiful dress, my dear.’ Well I just won’t have it. This is my wedding and it’s going to be my friends.”

  “Listen, dear,” said Mr. Banks with guarded gentleness, “this may be your wedding, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a kids’ party. What do you think we’re going to do? Leave out all our friends? Do you think we can leave out the Gibbons and the Roes and the Harts and all that crowd you’ve grown up with? Nonsense.”

  “All right, Pops. Who said you couldn’t have the Roes? Molly Roe is one of my best friends. Of course they’d be there. But that isn’t three hundred, is it?”

  The argument grew more violent. Mrs. Banks was for a very small wedding to which everyone should be asked. Tommy and Ben shouted unheeded opinions. Mr. Banks pounded the table and skirted apoplexy. Kay’s voice was teary. Delilah, hardened though she was to such scenes, retired to the kitchen in terror.

  Mr. Banks finally had an inspiration. He fetched a yellow pad of paper from “The Office” and placed it beside his plate. On it he wrote three names.

  “There,” he said, “that’s the smallest wedding you can have under the law—you and Buckley and the Reverend Cyrus Galsworthy. Now. Anybody else?”

  Kay threw up her hands. “Really, this is so childish, Pops. You always get so technical.”

  “Sometimes your father has good ideas, Kay. Go on, Stanley. Just put down the Dunstans and ourselves and Ben and Tommy.”

  “And Aunt Harriet, naturally, and Uncle Charlie,” said Kay.

  “Of course,” said Mr. Banks. “But I’d go slow from there in.” He wrote rapidly, keeping a tally on the side of the paper. After three quarters of an hour he ran out of sheets.

  “Do you know how many you have on the list now?”

  “About fifty,” said Kay sulkily.

  “Two hundred and six. And that doesn’t include most of our friends, and perhaps Buckley’s family might have one or two people they’d like to squeeze in.”

  “Oh, all right, Pops, if you’re going to be so disagreeable about it. But I tell you it’s my wedding and it’s going to be small. I don’t care.”

  He was ruined. Clearly and utterly ruined.

  She suddenly left the table and rushed up the stairs. Mr. Banks stared after her in amazement. “Good God, Ellie. What’s the matter with Kay? We’re just sitting here quietly putting down a few names and she goes all to pieces.”

  “She’s nervous,” said Tommy, through a mouthful of cake. “All women are nervous.”

  Late that night, when the hush of sleep had fallen over Fairview Manor, Mr. Banks lay on his back gazing at the watery reflection of the street light on the ceiling.

  Three hundred people drinking his champagne. Three hundred people eating his food. Three hundred—

  He was ruined. Clearly and utterly ruined. All his life he had been a prudent and thrifty man. Now he was caught in the nutcracker of the conventions and was about to squeeze out his economic life with his own hands.

  “I won’t do it,” he groaned, rolling onto his side. But he knew he would.

  • • •

  Kay was alone at the breakfast table when he came down the next morning, feeling as if he had
just returned from a three-day college reunion. Looking like a May morning, she slipped a piece of bread into the toaster for him.

  “Hi, Pops.”

  “Hi,” he said gloomily. He wondered how it was that women could go through these shattering emotional scenes and bounce up a few hours later as carefree as a sea gull behind the Queen Mary. He watched her butter the toast and a thought began to formulate in his jaded mind.

  “Listen, Kitten. I’ve got an idea.”

  “Good,” she said, putting his toast on the Lazy Susan and twirling it toward him.

  “I don’t know whether it’s good or not—and for God’s sake don’t tell your mother.”

  “Of course not. What is it, Pops?”

  “I’ll give you and Buckley fifteen hundred dollars to elope.”

  She looked at him incredulously. “Are you kidding?”

  “No, honest.”

  “Why, Pops, you must be out of your mind. Elope? Not have a wedding? Why, I wouldn’t dream of it! Why, you know Mom would die if I didn’t have a wedding with all the trimmings. I guess I would too. Not have any friends to see me get married—and all the people I’ve grown up with. Why, it wouldn’t be getting married, Pops. But you’re just pulling my leg.”

  “O.K.,” he said. “I just thought—O.K.”

  She came around the table and kissed him on the ear. “You’re sweet, Pops. Only don’t stew so much.”

  6

  THESE SHALL BE THE WEDDING GUESTS

  You people are looking at this whole thing upside down,” said Mr. Banks. “It’s not a question of how many people you want. You must start with the house. How many can stand in it at one time? The extras get jammed into the church.”

  After tense debate it was decided that one hundred and fifty was the absolute maximum that could be packed into 24 Maple Drive without physical injury. An additional one hundred might receive invitations to the church, but certainly not to the reception.

  This did not mean, of course, that the invitations must be limited to these numbers. People living at great distances wouldn’t show up if they were in their right minds, so the Bankses might as well get the credit for having asked them. Then, with any luck at all, it was safe to count on a certain number of local people being sick, or out of town, on the day of the wedding.

  Mr. Banks estimated that they could rely on refusals from a third of the local invitations. On that basis, and excluding the out-of-towners, they could ask two hundred and twenty-five to both the church and the reception and one hundred and fifty additional just to the church.

  To Mrs. Banks, who was used to entertaining on a retail level, this seemed like a staggering number. She proposed that each one make a separate list—just the people they really wanted. Then these could be combined, the duplicates eliminated—and there you were. If there were more than two hundred and twenty-five, which was unlikely, the excess could be asked to the church only.

  This task occupied an harmonious evening.

  Mrs. Banks jotted down the names of all living relatives (and her memory was encyclopedic), plus her special cronies in the Garden and Bridge Clubs; also all the people who had invited Mr. Banks and herself to dinner in the last few years—and whom she had neglected to ask back.

  Kay put down the classmates who had written fatuous messages across her photograph in her copy of the Heathwood Hall class album, all the young men who had ever asked her to major football games, and people whom she had visited for more than two days. In a burst of gratitude she threw in the fathers and mothers of those who had put her up (or vice versa) for more than a week. To these were added her former cronies at the Fairview Manor Country Day School and sundry strays.

  Mr. Banks thought in terms of old friends. As his memory limbered up, their dim forms passed before him almost faster than he could write them down. By the time he had finished with World War I his heart was overflowing with good-fellowship. Unfortunately, he couldn’t remember the last names of many of them and was obliged to let them go their way. Then he could not remember where most of the balance lived (or if they did). As a result his list was a small one.

  He spent the following evening combining the lists. There were alarmingly few duplications. Apparently the members of the Banks family had no friends in common. Finally he turned to his wife and daughter with a sadistic leer. “Guess how many.”

  Mrs. Banks squirmed uneasily. “Two hundred?” she ventured, without conviction.

  “Five hundred and seventy-two,” shouted Mr. Banks triumphantly. “Five! Seven! Two! What did I tell you? It’s either the immediate family or Madison Square Garden.”

  Mrs. Banks grabbed the lists. “Nonsense. Let me see. You’ve done something wrong. I’ll bet I can cut this down. Now look here, we certainly don’t need to have the Sparkmans. We never see them and as for that dyed-haired woman I don’t care if I ever have her in my house again.”

  Mr. Banks wondered why it was that, every time he discovered an attractive woman, Mrs. Banks said her hair was dyed. And anyway what if it was? “Listen,” he said. He was dignified now; cool, austere—and on guard. “Do you realize that Harry Sparkman is one of my most intimate friends, to say nothing of being a very good client? Why, I’d go to the ends of the earth for that fellow and he would for me.”

  “How ridiculous. You hardly ever see him.”

  “There you are,” said Kay. “I told you these were just customers. I knew it.”

  “Five hundred and seventy-two,” shouted Mr. Banks triumphantly.

  Mr. Banks bit his lip and said nothing. He realized that he was licked for the moment. “And who in the world are the DeLancey Crawfords?” continued Mrs. Banks smoothly. “I never even heard of them.”

  It was Kay’s inning. “Listen, Mom. How can you be so stupid? Don’t you remember that I spent half the summer with them at Western Point two years ago? And Twinkey Crawford is one of my closest, closest friends. Why, Mother, they’ve been right here in this house. Now if we’re going on like this, Mother—”

  “Maybe they won’t come,” suggested Mr. Banks. “Don’t they live in Pittsburgh or someplace?”

  “We can ask those families to the church and not the reception,” said Mrs. Banks, disposing of the matter.

  “The church!” cried Mr. Banks. “You mean to say you want to ask Harry and Jane Sparkman to the church and not to the house? Harry Sparkman? My intimate friend? Did they ask us just to the church when their daughter got married? No. And you were delighted to go to the reception. The church!”

  • • •

  The following evening Mr. Banks returned with a card file and large quantities of three-by-five cards.

  “The pink are for ‘Church Only,’ ” he explained. “The white ones are ‘Church and Reception.’ Now here’s a rubber stamp. Whenever you’re sure someone can’t come because they live out of town or something, stamp that card ‘P.N.C.’ That means ‘Probably Not Coming.’ ”

  Three nights later everyone’s name had been written on a pink or a white card. The out-of-towners and the local 4Fs had been happily stamped “P.N.C.” Then Mr. Banks took the second census.

  Mrs. Banks watched him nervously. “Maybe they’ll come out about right now,” she said.

  Kay looked bored. “The whole thing is just too sordid. I had always thought a wedding was a joyous occasion. The way you’re going at it you might as well hire a couple of bookkeepers to put it on for you.”

  Mr. Banks’ only reply was to count audibly to help his concentration. “Here’s the box score,” he announced at last. “Ten people have been asked to the church and not the reception. Five hundred and sixty-two have been asked to both. There are one hundred and fifty-two cards stamped ‘P.N.C.’ That leaves four hundred and ten people who might show up. Figuring that a third of them won’t, you’ll have two hundred and seventy-three people at the reception.

  “I don’t follow you very well,” said Mrs. Banks in a dazed voice, “but it looks as if we’d have to cut out a few.�
��

  “All you’ve got to do is to throw a hundred and twenty-three people out on their necks,” said Mr. Banks grimly.

  Kay yawned. “I’m going to bed. My list is right down to the bone, so I can’t be of much help.”

  Each white card . . . debated at length and returned to its place with a sigh.

  Mr. Banks opened his mouth, but Mrs. Banks motioned it shut again. Kay stalked out of the room, swinging her hips with dignity.

  “We can work it out,” said Mrs. Banks. “Kay’s upset. All we have to do is to shift these superfluous people over to the church and not invite them to the reception. Now the Harry Sparkmans—”

  Mr. Banks refused the gage. The timing didn’t seem right. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go. We’ll start by putting the Garden Club in the church—and leaving ’em there.”

  Each white card was removed from the box, de-bated at length, and returned to its original place with a sigh. At the end of each round, when they came to Carlton B. Zachery, they had succeeded in eliminating or relegating to the church only a handful of names. Quite obviously they were getting nowhere. They had too many dear, close, loyal, lifelong friends, to all of whom they seemed to be indebted.

  After three fruitless evenings of this sort of thing Mr. Banks had lunch with a client who was head of a large accounting firm. He had just run the gauntlet himself and, after the manner of all survivors, he liked to strut his scars. As a form of wound-licking he had reduced everything to neat figures.

  Wedding guests, he explained, should be broken down into church units and reception units. That was the only way to get at the per-unit cost. At his wedding each reception unit cost $3.72, including champagne, caterers, tips, breakage, flowers, furniture-moving and extra insurance. He had not included wear and tear, feeling that, considering the occasion, it would be on the mercenary side.

  Mr. Banks made some calculations on the tablecloth, and the spirit of hospitality fled from him. That evening he had a business dinner in town, but the following morning he faced the shaving mirror with the set jaw of leadership.