Lucy looked at me and I looked back at her. “I have no idea what it looks like,” Lucy said. Neither one of us had thought to ask Anna to see her dress.
June’s smile faded. “No dress! Your mother assured me she would find you a dress.” She looked like she would cry at Lucy’s predicament.
“No. There’s a dress. We just don’t know what it looks like.” Lucy was waving her hands and starting to talk very fast. “We’ll just look around if you don’t mind.”
June hesitated, as if she were leaving two lambs out in an open storm, then said, “If you have any questions, I’m right here,” before walking away.
I tried on a headpiece with a full-length veil that would have taken two flower girls to hold up. I turned this way and that in the mirror and thought I looked a bit like Princess Diana at her wedding. Lucy rejected everything I showed her. She didn’t seem very into the whole thing. Finally, in exasperation, I told her we had five minutes before we had to head home. Lucy grabbed a headpiece off the rack and went to pay June without even trying it on.
Ten minutes later, we were home and back into the frenzy of the shower schedule and car arrangements.
I walked into my parents’ bedroom to steal some nylons from my mom. Chuck didn’t see me come in. He was sitting on the bed talking on the phone and gazing out the window. “The whole thing has just gone too far.” Pause. “I love you, too. I am so sorry about this. Yeah, I’ll call you tomorrow. Okay, good-bye.” He started when he saw me. “How long have you been there?”
“I just walked in. Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.” I fumbled through Mom’s lingerie drawer and extracted a pair of nylons. I stuck my hand inside each leg, spread the material, and counted how many runs were in them. These weren’t so bad. I asked him how his mouth was.
“Better. The pain is gone but I’ll have to wear this for a few weeks.” He knocked lightly on his headgear. “Otherwise I’ll lose the teeth.”
“Oh. Right. You don’t want to lose your teeth.” I shut the door behind me, feeling a bit desperate. Who had Chuck been talking to on the phone? As I rolled each nylon leg down to the toe and struggled into them, I pondered the situation. It must have been his mom or his dad. The alternatives didn’t appeal to me.
At Elizabeth’s two-minute warning call, I went downstairs to find that I was the last one ready. My grandma, mom, sisters, and I lined up for the requisite photos. Every major occasion demanded the same photo. The backdrop was always the fireplace. We have umpteen shots of proms and graduations taken in the same place. As usual, Dad kept fiddling with the timer on the camera until Mom yelled at him that we were going to be late. Chuck waited patiently, sitting on the edge of a chair behind Dad. When we were done, Lucy said, “Dad, would you take a shot of me and Chuck?”
Mom stopped dead. We had left out a family member. I could tell she was mortified by her faux pas. Growing up, she had been made to feel unwelcome in many social situations. She didn’t have the right clothes or the right whatever. It was a big thing with her that we kids always treated everyone as equals. And here she had gone and forgotten Chuck.
Dad recovered first and pushed Chuck forward. “We were just saving the best for last.” Then Lucy and Chuck were immortalized in front of the fireplace.
Evan and Anna were getting married at St. Francis De Sales, a Catholic church across town. Evan, who was fairly apathetic about religion, got up in arms for some reason about being married by a Catholic priest. Finally, after much discussion, Father Whippet had been invited to participate in the ceremony. When we arrived at the church, Father Whippet’s wife, Miriam, was at the door.
“It’s about time you got here.” She pointed at Dad. “Evan wants to talk to you. He’s in one of the back rooms.” Dad brushed by the bridesmaids, walked down the side aisle, and disappeared into the sacristy, where Evan and his groomsmen were. Miriam turned to my mother. “Cold feet,” she said in a stage whisper. We bunched up in a group trying not to get in the way as guest after guest arrived and was seated. As family, we were supposed to be escorted down the aisle by groomsmen and seated at the front, but they hadn’t asked for us yet. Mom smiled at each arrival. She grabbed my arm and leaned over.
“Go see what’s holding up your father,” she whispered, then straightened to continue greeting guests.
I followed the path Dad had taken and entered the darkness of the hallway behind the altar. Door after door faced me. I made my way through the barely lit hall and tried each door. They were locked, but eventually one gave in my hand. I stuck my head inside only to see Father Whippet standing much too close to a woman whose back was to me. I ducked my head back out and hoped they hadn’t seen me. I found Evan and Dad behind the next door. “What’s going on?” I asked Dad. “Mom’s getting antsy.” I shut up when I saw his face.
“Where is she?”
“Up front in the vestibule.”
He walked ahead of me and I hopped to keep up. Dad was already talking to Mom when I got there. They had pulled away from the crowd.
“I don’t know. We’ll just have to sit down and see what happens,” was all I could make out. Sammie looked at me and I gave her a wide-eyed shrug.
Elizabeth looked at her watch. “It’s twenty past six.” Ron shuffled in his Gucci loafers. Grandma stood patiently to one side, as if waiting for something to happen was the story of her life. Since it didn’t seem that anyone was coming to seat us, we decided to go ahead and seat ourselves.
St. Francis De Sales was not a small church. It was a large modern one. The regular congregation numbered in the thousands, unlike our church, St. Peter’s, which held only a couple hundred. They had sectioned off pews, delineated with red velvet ropes, for the wedding. As the nine of us walked down the aisle, every head turned to look at us. Our steps on the stone floor rang up to the rafters, five stories above us. For some reason the pew reserved for our family held only six. Lucy and Chuck and I had to go back up the aisle and search for seats. We looked like rejected family members, but everyone got a good look at Chuck. Most of them had burned up the phone wires that day discussing the latest Thompson folly. We split up and had better luck. I wound up on the bride’s side with people I didn’t know. Thankfully.
When the music began, signaling the start of the ceremony, I strained to see the altar. There was no Evan and there were no groomsmen. There was no Father Whippet, either. The bridesmaids were starting to come down the aisle, all eight of them in peach taffeta. As they reached the altar, one after another looked around, bewildered. Then a trumpet blew and Anna appeared at the door on her father’s arm. Smiling left and right, left and right, she didn’t notice that there was no one to meet her at the altar. I would have given anything to be sitting in my family’s pew right then.
The woman next to me exclaimed, “Where is the groom?”
In the meantime, Anna reached the altar and looked around like she wasn’t sure what was missing. Then she stood still. The music stopped. The bridesmaids smiled frozen smiles as they gamely held their bouquets at their waists. Anna threw a glance back at Mom and Dad, as if they had stashed Evan somewhere. I could see Anna’s mom, Helen, glare at my mom across the aisle. Finally, they all couldn’t keep up the pretense anymore and gathered in an untidy group on the steps of the altar. The guests watched them avidly. This was certainly more interesting than most weddings.
Then Evan came striding out from the wings, his groomsmen trailing behind him. They were all talking among themselves and gesturing. It was not the most orderly entrance I’ve ever seen. Father Whippet flapped along behind them while he adjusted his robes. Everyone sort of crowded into place while Father Whippet fought to get through the bridal party to the altar. Evan took Anna’s hands, gave her a quick smile, and they turned toward the minister. Helen glared again at Mom, then tipped her nose in the air and back to the action at the altar. Mom kept her attention fixed on the bride and groom, pretending not to notice. Sammie, however, shot Helen the finger. From behind, I could only
see Mom, head poised, still looking straight ahead, reach up and push Sammie’s hand down and out of sight. I was so anxious to hear what had transpired in the back room I barely paid attention to the ceremony.
Chapter Ten
March 2006
Sammie was furious with me. Missing my nephew’s tenth birthday had blown up into something larger than I expected. We had a roof-raising phone call in which she unloaded about years of my perceived slights. Apparently I had missed or been late for one too many family events.
“Remember how we all flew home to Michigan to surprise Mom and Dad for their anniversary, but you ‘couldn’t make it’ at the last second?” Sammie had snapped.
“I was stuck in Paris! The international team at Oxford Pictures scheduled an emergency meeting about global film piracy just when I supposed to leave for Michigan! Isn’t that a pretty good reason?” I retorted.
Sammie snorted in response. And like Sammie, I knew deep down that, no, it wasn’t a pretty good reason. It didn’t matter that I had finally shown up. I had shown up about thirty hours too late.
Sammie had ended the call by hanging up on me. After storming around my house and kicking the ottoman several times, I took the only course available to me: I called Mom. Sobbing, I told her about the fight Sammie and I had. As usual, she listened patiently. Finally, after I had blathered out the whole story about how unfair Sammie was being, I stopped, exhausted. Mom’s silence let me know she was weighing her words. Eventually she said, “Sweetheart, you know that Sammie loves you . . .”
“I knooowwww,” I interrupted to sob some more, “but she’s being so meeeaaann.”
“Maybe you should look at the whole picture, what Sammie is really trying to say to you.”
My eyes narrowed on my end of the phone line. “Sammie already called you, didn’t she?” Damn it, Sammie had gotten to Mom first. I shouldn’t have spent so much time kicking the ottoman.
“Well, yes, she did, honey. She’s just as upset as you are. I think she’s just worried that your job is consuming you. We’re very proud that you are so successful, but . . .” Mom paused.
“But what?” I rubbed my arm under my nose and was rewarded with a long string of snot. I stumbled to the bathroom to find some toilet paper to clean myself up as I heard my mom take a deep breath.
“But you take this job too seriously. Surely nothing could be so important that you wouldn’t have time for your family,” Mom said carefully. “Or is it Aidan? Is it that Aidan doesn’t want to see any of us?”
“No, no,” I stammered. “That’s not it.” While I didn’t want Aidan to meet my family, I did talk to my mom at length about him: what a great guy he was, how he put up with me, all of which, I’m sure, just left poor Mom all the more perplexed about why I kept him hidden from the family. It would have hurt all of their feelings too much if I had told them I thought they would scare him away.
After I hung up the phone I miserably ordered a large pepperoni pizza, then sat on the couch and ate the whole thing. My family didn’t understand my life. I had to be perfect. Especially now, with Katsu constantly questioning every move I made at work. It was like having a terrier nip at my heels everywhere I went.
The consequences were too big if I wasn’t perfect. One screw-up or misspoken word and months of work on a trailer or poster would be down the drain. I was proud of my track record, but it took hours of work and preparation. Plus, I felt the pressure even more now to win the approval of my boss. Last week I had made an uncharacteristic mistake on how much had been spent to date on a campaign. Katsu had jumped all over it. He was so persistent that even Rachael had given him the eye to shut up. That, at least, had made me feel better. What part of seniority did Katsu not understand? I wondered. He could at least pretend to have respect for the work I had done. But many twenty- or thirty-somethings had risen to president or chairman in film studios. And it wasn’t because they were such nice people.
In the meantime, Sammie and I still hadn’t made up yet, and it gnawed at me, around the edges of my brain. It now was one more thing to wake me up in the middle of the night.
That night, I had carved out time with Aidan to go see his family. The irony was not lost on me. Aidan picked me up at my house and, as had become our ritual when we had a moment alone, I continued my story. Over the weeks, a little bit would be told over dinner, more would be told in bed. Or, like now, on the way to dinner with Aidan’s father and stepmother.
At a stoplight I paused in the tale of growing up in my disastrous family.
“God, in my family we just get married, and then we just get divorced. Simple,” Aidan commented.
“Wow, there’s a ringing endorsement for marrying you.” I shifted deeper into his car’s leather seat. “And nothing is ever simple. Even if it looks simple, it usually isn’t. There are always complications brewing under the surface.”
“Not in my book. I think it’s the inherent difference between men and women. Men accept things the way they are and women analyze them.”
We were going to his dad and stepmom’s house in Holmby Hills. It was a thirty-minute drive from my house and a world away. I stared at the houses we passed. Rather, I should rightfully call them mansions. My family’s house could easily fit inside most of their garages. Each one was gorgeous, but because Los Angeles grew in such a haphazard manner, each one was a different style. An English Tudor might be next to a Spanish Mediterranean that might be next to a starkly modern house. It’s sort of like Disneyland for very rich people.
While I lived in a much less desirable neighborhood, I loved my little house. It was on Maple Street in Santa Monica. Tree-lined and kid friendly, it was one of the few streets that hadn’t had its original homes from the nineteen twenties knocked down in favor of an expressionless apartment building. My house, built in 1927, was Spanish style with arched doorways, wide wood floors, and glass doorknobs. I’d furnished it with cushy, oversized down chairs and a sofa covered in a soft, green floral pattern. Aidan had commented when he saw it that it was a far cry from the severe modern furniture I kept in my office. I felt like I could let down my guard in this house. The only problem was that it was a long drive to Aidan’s house, in the San Fernando Valley.
We pulled in to the circular driveway and parked between Aidan’s stepmom’s BMW and his dad’s Mercedes. Careful not to scratch the Mercedes when I opened my car door, I reflected that in Michigan, if any one of those cars had appeared in a driveway, the neighbors would be talking snidely for years. When I was growing up, you simply didn’t buy a foreign car if you lived in the state that Henry Ford had built.
Aidan’s dad lived in a Spanish-style home, and the great wooden front door burst open, spilling out two kids. Max and Audrey raced, shrieking, across the courtyard separating the house from the driveway. These were Aidan’s half-brother and -sister, ten-year-old twins who, from the way they were climbing on Aidan, clearly adored him. Aidan hoisted Max over his shoulder while Audrey, more shyly, came over and took my hand. We all went to meet Jim, Aidan’s dad, who stood in the open doorway.
Aidan deposited Max on the step and bear-hugged his father. Jim then took my hand and kissed my cheek. We entered the foyer with its original eighteenth-century Mexican chandelier and I heard Janet call from the kitchen, “Jim, are they here?” A petite blonde hurried through a door, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. Janet hugged both of us and led us to the living room. While Jim opened a bottle of wine at the wet bar on one side of the room, Aidan and I sat on the couch. “I still can’t get over your view,” I said as I gazed out at the city lights sparkling far below.
“I’m a lucky man and I know it.” Jim smiled as he handed me my wine. “I’m going to go help Janet in the kitchen, but I’ll be back in a second.” As he left the living room I heard him shout into the TV room, “You kids better not be playing video games! You have homework to do.”
I stood up to look at the photos sitting framed in the floor-to-ceiling bookcase. The first one I came to
was actually a framed piece of paper. It was the patent for Jim’s invention, the thing that allowed him all this luxury. Several years before, I knew, Jim had invented a simple device now used in hospitals the world over. He had retired and now spent most of his time either with his family or serving on various corporate boards.
I moved on to the next frame. “Is this you?” I teased Aidan. I held a grainy, discolored photo of Aidan taken when he was about five years old. It showed him trying to drink out of the garden hose. A smallish white house stood behind him. Aidan took the photo from me and regarded it. “Where was this taken?” I asked.
“At home. This is where we lived right before my parents split up. My dad wasn’t making much money then. He was still completing his residency.”
A thought struck me. “What about what your mom said? That you had a personal chef and all that stuff?”
“That was just a little bit later. When Mom married Sam. Until then, my dad made meals for me because, as Mom said, she didn’t know how to cook. Actually, my life became pretty schizophrenic. I alternated weeks living with my mom or my dad. So one week I’d be living in a mansion with a chauffeur to drive me to school. The next week I’d be living in a small house with a babysitter who looked after me.” Aidan put the photo gently back into its place. “Max and Audrey are pretty lucky kids.”
I regarded his profile. He was still looking at the picture, but his expression was unreadable. Aidan strolled over to fiddle with the audio system, and I went to see if I could help Janet.
The kitchen could easily have been a commercial kitchen in a restaurant, except it was a lot more luxurious. Janet waved a fork at me and said I could set the table. I went to the cupboard where I knew plates were kept and started, with my load, toward the dining room.
“Oh no, honey. Let’s just eat in here. It’s much more cozy,” Janet called after me. So I returned to set the plates and silverware on the granite island in the middle of the room and sat down on a stool. Soon all of us were eating good old steak, mashed potatoes, and peas. Max and Audrey pouted and refused to eat their peas, but Janet was having none of it. Finally she scooped the peas up with a spoon and deposited them in the center of their mashed potatoes. “There, now it’s a bird’s nest. See, the peas are the eggs and the potatoes are the nest,” she announced. Max and Audrey dubiously looked at it but started eating.
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