“She’s left the road completely,” Sicily thought, as she stared out at the dazzling white. She would need to iron her dark blue suit, the one she wore to Dorrie Fennelson’s wedding. She would not waste money on another dress for such a sad occasion as her own daughter’s wedding. She would wear the bouquet that was sitting in her refrigerator. Amy Joy had bought it the evening before and now it was perched atop a dozen eggs, next to the orange juice, with its little green “IGA grocery item” sticker. Pearl had worn black when Junior married Thelma Parsons, but Sicily had always fought the psychological inward battle and left the outward ones to Pearl. She wasn’t sure yet what it was, but on the snowy morning of her daughter’s wedding, she knew something had to be done. Maybe she could fake a heart attack at the church. But no, Amy Joy had said she’d had it up to there with Sicily’s organs. Maybe when the minister asked if anyone had any objections, Sicily could stand up and ask, “Where should I begin?” She had even thought of lacing Amy Joy’s Pepsi with sleeping pills, hoping she’d sleep all the way past seven p.m. on the day of her wedding. But Sicily was afraid she might use too many pills. Amy Joy would stay sleeping forever and Sicily would go to jail for life. Although, compared to having Jean Claude as a son-in-law, Sicily could imagine herself knitting boxes of mittens, crocheting doilies, painting every paint-by-number picture in the state of Maine, and being perfectly happy. Except that she would miss Amy Joy, just as she would miss her after today. Twice during the night Sicily had left her own warm bed and tiptoed down the stairs to stand outside her daughter’s bedroom door. Only when she heard the regular whistles of breath coming and going from Amy Joy’s chest, like little trains, did Sicily find strength enough to go back to her room.
“This is her last night in my house as a child,” she thought. “At least as my child.” But twenty-four years old and still single in Mattagash meant it was time to get the lead out.
Sicily put a tea bag in her cup and splashed hot water on it. There were still several hours before the catastrophe. Maybe something unforeseen would happen. Maybe there would be an earthquake. Few people realized that the state of Maine had as many faults as other states, so to speak.
“Dear Jesus,” Sicily prayed. “Please do something.”
***
They had been at Albert Pinkham’s establishment for only two nights and already he was at his wits’ end as to whether he should toss them out again, or swallow his anger and pad the room bill. There had been a constant parade of Ivys to his door demanding everything from writing paper to postcards to an ice bucket. An ice bucket, for Chrissakes! And there was the Mattagash River bank piled to high heaven with cakes of ice so big they’d make your head spin!
“Here,” Albert had said, and offered Randy Ivy a plastic Tupperware bowl and an ice pick. “Now you go down through that little patch of trees to the river and you chisel off all the ice you’ll need.”
“Balls!” Randy had looked through bleary eyes and told Albert. “You mean there’s no ice in your fridge, man?”
“Does this look like an igloo?” Albert demanded, and slammed the door in the boy’s face. Albert had never seen dogs pay so much attention to their genitals. No one in Mattagash acted as crazed as Randy Ivy, except maybe Bill Fennelson, and he had a good reason. His mumps had gone down on him. And there was something else. Albert was smelling funny smells coming from number 4. As if someone had poured gasoline on old socks, then set them on fire. He was keeping as close an eye as he could on the comings and goings in number 4. Lola Craft was one of the comings. A real strumpet, that one. What his mother would have called a fallen sister. And if Winnie Craft were to hear such talk, which was circulating the entire town of Mattagash, it would most definitely take the wind out of her uppity sails. Winnie Craft would be permanently beached with that kind of news.
A slight knock jarred Albert back to the troublesome present, and he peered through the curtains directly into Thelma’s pale, peaked face. She had already been there five times that morning. Albert had blazed that number into his brain. Three times she had whined and lamented that there was no breakfast to be served her in the privacy of her room. Breakfast in her room!
“Are you a queen or something?” Albert had asked the confused woman before him. “No? Sorry. We only serve queens breakfast in bed.”
Once, she had come for postage stamps.
“This ain’t the post office, Miss Ivy,” Albert had calmly explained. “You drive to St. Leonard on Monday and they’ll sell you all the stamps your funeral parlor money can buy.” He didn’t care if he insulted her. She was too dazed to notice anyway.
“Funeral home,” she had told him. “We are not a parlor. We don’t give massages.”
“I’ll give you a slap,” Albert thought, but said nothing. Now here she was again. Albert opened the door. He would never be able to vacuum and then make up the bed in number 2, the bridal suite, if these niggling sandwich eaters kept up their assault on his door.
“What is it now?” he asked.
“Do you have dry-cleaning service?” Thelma wondered.
***
Junior knocked on the door to the pink room and Monique Tessier answered.
“Well, if it isn’t an old friend,” she said.
“What are you doing way up here?” He slipped into the room. He had no desire to run into Randy, next door, although he had not seen much of his son since they’d pulled into Mattagash. Randy had asked for a Bible and then retired to his room.
“It’s a free world,” said Monique Tessier. “I guess I can go where I want.”
“The hell you can,” said Junior. “This isn’t the world. This is Mattagash, Maine. You’re looking for trouble.”
“You got any?” asked Monique, and slipped a cigarette from a new pack.
“This won’t work, this little stunt,” said Junior. “Thelma already knows about you. The old man knows. I’ll just tell them the truth. You followed me here against my will.”
“What will you tell them about this?” asked Monique, and slipped her sweater over her head and stood surrounded by pink walls, braless, brown from the sunlamp she had been lying beneath on her living room floor since December.
“Oh god!” said Junior and covered his eyes. He tried to think of something else, of his son Marvin Randall Ivy III, in the very next room, maybe reading Leviticus at that very moment. And the man that committeth adultery shall surely be put to death. He could not forget them. Their images danced beneath his closed lids and would not go away. He could see yellow spots now, which swam into large brown nipples, and the nipples rose magnificently from mounds ripened beneath a sunlamp but genuine as hell.
“She’s hypnotizing me with them,” Junior thought, and imagined them swinging on the end of a string before his face. You are getting sleepy…very sleepy. He could smell her Chanel No. 5 perfume, a mixture of cigarette smoke and lipstick mingling on her breath, her breath warm in his ear. It was Neeky, these sights and sounds and smells.
“It’s been such a long time, Junie,” she whispered, her hands on his belt undoing it, her fingers rubbing his chest and undoing his knitted hands, undoing his marriage.
“Junie,” Monique cooed.
“Please go away,” Junior whispered. “Please go back to Portland.”
“You don’t want that now, do you?” Monique asked, and placed Junior’s hands on her warm breasts. “You don’t want to be stuck up here in the sticks all by yourself, do you?”
Junior gazed down into her violet eyes, lavender as flowers. “Elizabeth Taylor,” he thought. And he wondered if Randy might find a passage somewhere in his trusty Bible that would exempt a weak man from time to time, when faced with a pure-blooded Jezebel.
***
Randy Ivy paid no attention to the headboard next door as it bumped urgently into his wall with a calculated rhythm. He was too concerned with examining Lola Craft’s navel
for the hundredth time that day.
“It’s fuckin’ unreal,” Randy said to the girl, who lay on her back, eyes glued to the ceiling. She was unused to pot, had never even smelled it until opportunity crossed her path with Randy Ivy’s own twisted trail. “It’s like a little Grand Canyon right here on your stomach, with little people from Ohio and Kentucky crawling around the rim, takin’ Polaroid shots. I’m talking eerie, man.”
“What about yours?” said Lola. “Let’s look at yours for a while.” She tugged up Randy’s T-shirt. “An outie!” she screamed.
“Yeah,” said Randy. “We’re talking pyramids in Egypt now. We’re talkin’ fuckin’ camels walkin’ around mine.” Randy pulled off his jeans and then helped Lola off with her own. Lola was better than Leslie Boudreau. With Lola he was a city man. He was in charge.
“Let’s dance naked,” he said. “Like natives.”
“I gotta go help Amy Joy get ready,” Lola said. “Besides, Mama thinks I spent the night there. She might phone about something and want to talk to me.”
Randy leaned down and stuck his tongue in her navel. Lola pulled away in hysterics.
“That tickles!”
“I’m filling up the Grand Canyon,” Randy said. “I’m a big wave wiping all them little tourists away. Come here, little canyon.” He chased Lola about the room with his tongue stuck far out in pursuit. They fell on the bed and Randy pressed his groin against her stomach. A few more nits loosed themselves. It was the first genuine case of crabs to hit Mattagash, Maine, and the culprits were ready. They’d had a terrifying and tightly squeezed ride all the way from Portland, after leaving the amorous affections of Miss Leslie “Boudoir” Boudreau. They had been jostled, raked, and poked. They had managed the extra pressure of the potholes and the frost heaves, as well as Randy’s lack of social inhibitions. But they had survived, a testament to their evolutionary durability. Now, like burdocks, like the cherry pits that robins eat only to shit them over new territory, thus spreading the silky cherry blossoms, the crabs lined up. They marched around the scrotum, dodging the rake of Randy’s fingers that came at them. They arranged themselves in mindless formation. Their nits loosened from Randy’s pubic hairs and reached up like the sticky hands of children. This was nature. They weren’t as cute as kittens, but the crabs were entitled to their chance. When Lola Craft pulled herself up from Randy’s warm embrace, she took some little visitors from Portland with her. Another kind of houseguest.
“Randy?” Lola stopped at the door and looked back.
“What, babe?” Randy’s scrotum felt as if acupuncturists were at work.
“Were you serious about taking me back to Portland with you?”
“Fuckin’ A,” said Randy. “And soon. We’re almost out of dope.”
***
Amy Joy Lawler could not look at herself in the mirror at first. She was afraid to stare into her own eyes, at the truths which might be lying there, waiting like mousetraps. Planning a wedding was one thing. Following through with it was another. It was as if the plans kept your mind off the consequences. Now here she was, all the invitations sent, the corsages bought, the food dishes assigned as to which neighbors would bring what, a kind of community catering of casseroles, sandwiches, and pastries. The Mattagash gym was decorated with pink and white carnations made from boxes of Kleenex tissue Amy Joy had delivered to the lower grades at Mattagash Grammar School. This artistic job was usually reserved for graduation exercises. But everyone made an exception in Amy Joy Lawler’s case. Peter Craft had picked up the three cases of pineapple juice so that his aunt Winnie could make Tropical Islands Delight punch, although the snow filtering down over Mattagash would make it difficult for locals to stop shivering long enough to appreciate a taste of the tropics. And of course, Sicily’s wedding dress had been altered for the occasion. Amy Joy pulled the gossamer dress from its plastic bag and looked at it. The dress. This would be another shock for Sicily. But it was Amy Joy’s wedding, and that made all the difference. She hadn’t starved herself for two months for nothing. When Nora Henderson did the alterations following Amy Joy’s instructions, the dress had gone in as a floor-length and come out as a mini. Sicily would just have to understand that for the first time in her life Amy Joy had legs that were not dimpled. This would be the last time, as a single woman, she would be able to show off gams such as these. And she intended to go out of spinsterhood in a blaze of glory, of glorious snowflakes, her legs clad in white hose that was covered with tiny white roses. Let Sicily drop dead in her pew. It was 1969, not 1931, when the dress had first been used to lure Ed Lawler into an unwanted wedding. Amy Joy had heard Aunt Marge drop a few barbs about Sicily’s indoctrination of the schoolteacher from Massachusetts who would become her father. She fingered the lace of her mother’s wedding dress, now a third of its former length. Amy Joy had asked Nora Fennelson to save the amputated material in case Sicily had a hypochondriac fit of some sort. Amy Joy also realized that by the time her own daughter chose to wear the dress, styles might have changed again.
“I want the train as long as possible, though,” Amy Joy thought, and ran her fingers along the eight-foot wake of lace. She wished the weather hadn’t turned into such an enemy on her wedding day. A white, lacy mini dress and rose-clung hose somehow clashed with all that snow. At least she had chosen a silky purse as “something blue.” In reality it was something to carry makeup in, and blue was the first color she scooped up out of the spring grab bag sale of pocketbooks at Mademoiselle Nicole’s in Watertown. She put the dress away, under its brown plastic wrapper, when Sicily knocked on the door.
“Amy Joy?”
“What?”
“Can you open up a second?” Sicily asked. She was standing in the doorway with circles under her eyes and a slice of buttered bread in one hand, a bottle of Pepsi in the other. Amy Joy smiled.
“You can be the sweetest thing when you want to,” she said.
“I figured this might be the last time you ever ate your specialty in my house,” Sicily said. “In your house.”
“I’ve only been putting the butter on one out of every four times,” said Amy Joy. “But I don’t suppose if I eat this butter now that it will show up by seven o’clock.” She took the Pepsi and the bread and beckoned for Sicily to come farther into the room.
“What’s this, anyway?” Amy Joy asked, and waved the bottle of Pepsi. “I thought you hated to see me drink this. You said my front teeth would drop out before I was twenty years old.”
“Well, it’s not exactly that bad,” Sicily said. Oh, how she wished her teeth had fallen out! Jean Claude wouldn’t have given her the time of day then, and Sicily could always find the extra money to get her daughter a new set of choppers later on. When she was about fifty. “How are you feeling today?” Sicily asked.
“Why?”
“Well, I mean, this close to the big moment and all.”
“Nervous,” Amy Joy admitted. “How did you feel?”
“Nervous,” said Sicily. They smiled at each other, sharing a warm moment, a hard-found answer to a secret only brides could know, a secret about the fragility of human beings. Mothers knew that daughters were sure to feel it. Daughters were surprised to learn that mothers knew such things. A moment was shared, and a warm silence fell between them.
“Oh please don’t marry that Frog!” Sicily cried.
“Get out!” said Amy Joy. “I mean now.”
“But, Amy Joy, you’re ruining our lives!” Sicily screamed.
“Our lives,” Amy Joy said. “Will you listen to you? Lola Craft is coming over to fix French curls on the top of my head and I’d prefer that my maid of honor not see you throwing one of your conniptions.”
“This isn’t a conniption!” Sicily screamed. “This is an emergency! Besides, what honor? There’s no honor in this, and I doubt seriously that Lola Craft is still a maid!”
“You’re makin
g a fool of yourself,” Amy Joy said, and turned to face her vanity mirror. There it was again, catching her unaware, the pitiful face of childhood, longing to stay where it was.
“I’m making a fool of myself? All of Mattagash is laughing so hard it sounds like the ice running. Even the Giffords are laughing.”
“What has Mattagash got to laugh at, anyway?” Amy Joy asked, and sprayed a long silver streak down the right side of her hair. She hadn’t planned to apply this now, only after Lola had planted a small band of curls high on her head. The decision to do so prematurely was to heighten the effect such an action would have on her mother, not on her hair.
“I wish now you’d joined the air force,” Sicily said. “I wish you hadn’t been so overweight that they couldn’t have put you into a uniform and dropped you somewhere over Texas.”
“Why don’t you just stay home tonight?” Amy Joy said, and threw her hairbrush against the wall. “I don’t want you at the church or at the gym!”
“Oh, is that right, missy?” Sicily grabbed the plate that held Amy Joy’s small yellow field of hay. She reached for the Pepsi bottle, but Amy Joy whisked it away from her.
“Well, you might be jumping outta the frying pan into the fire. We’ll just see. And don’t expect to see me standing in the open door when you come crying back home.”
“I don’t,” said Amy Joy, and took a large drink of soda pop. “I expect you to be snooping from behind the curtains or rubbering on the phone.”
“We’ll see,” said Sicily. “You’re gonna cry your eyes out to come back.”
“I doubt it,” said Amy Joy.
MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!: GOSSIP IN THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP
A Wedding on the Banks Page 25
