“Did you find me a Dr Pepper?” Grandma asked.
“Not yet,” I said as I lifted a corner of the curtain to see if the cop had left yet.
“I would have thought Chuck would be back by now with a bottle,” Grandma said from the living room.
“Where is he?” I asked her.
“He was going running this morning so I asked him to find me some Dr Pepper. It’s not like your mother would bother having any in the house for me.”
I hoisted myself up. “Grandma, I’m sure Mom didn’t mean to forget your Dr Pepper. It’s just been a little crazy around here. I don’t think anyone has even remembered to feed the dog.”
“Are you comparing me to Buddy?” she asked.
I silently wished Grandma would go back to low volume. Just then, Chuck slammed in through the back door carrying a six-pack of Dr Pepper and a round tin of Kodiak chewing tobacco. He had on a pair of red running shorts and his shoes. Sweat shone on his lean body. Bounding into the living room, Chuck flopped down next to Grandma and gallantly opened a can. It promptly fizzed up and squirted all over the place. Chuck put his mouth to it and sucked up the excess, then handed the can to Grandma. She nodded her thanks. Chuck pulled his white mouth guard out and rubbed the strings of saliva and Dr Pepper on his forearm. “Sorry it took me so long but I had to run nearly ten miles over to someplace called Twin Lake to find any Dr Pepper.” Bouncing back up, he took the stairs two at a time. I stared at spilled soda pop on the carpet and then the sweat outline that his back and legs had made on my mother’s prize antique couch.
It had been decided that Chuck would wear his dress uniform. This was mainly because Evan’s wedding had wiped out most of the tuxes at Le Tux Shop. Plus, no one trusted any of Evan’s groomsmen to get a tux back on time without major dry cleaning needs. Lucy, I think, was pleased that Chuck was wearing his army uniform. It represented her new life and she was far more comfortable with it than the life she had lived here for twenty years.
Elizabeth was outside completely coiffed, put together, and perfect, directing where the tables were to be set up under the tent. Ron was sitting near her in the same clothes he had worn the night before, reading the paper and drinking coffee. It was 11:20, so I scrammed out of her way. As I went upstairs to finish my makeup, I heard her belt out like a drill sergeant, “Ten minutes until we leave!”
“Did one of you girls take my black bow tie?” Dad shouted from deep in his closet. There was a pause as we all considered.
“I think I have it,” Sammie said as she ran from the bathroom to her room holding a towel in front of her. I went in behind her, watched her root around in a bottom drawer, held my hand out to receive the tie, and took it back to Dad.
“I don’t even want to know why she had it,” he said. He fumbled with it and Mom went to help him. Chuck was now showered, dressed, and sitting downstairs with Grandma. At 11:30, Elizabeth finally could not restrain herself. “It’s time. Right now. And I do mean right now. Everyone down those stairs and into the cars.” For once we all listened and assembled in the hall foyer.
“Oh, Harold, just look at these two.” Mom looked at Lucy and Chuck with tears in her eyes. I wasn’t sure if they were tears of happiness or what. “Let’s get a picture.”
“There is no time. Period,” Elizabeth barked.
I looked at Lucy as we trooped down the walk. She had her white cowboy hat on with her frilly lace dress. She looked kind of like a Dallas debutante.
Dad opened the car doors, and I heard Lucy say to Chuck, “Spit out the chewing tobacco.”
“This mouth guard thing holds it in real good.”
Lucy gave up and threw herself into the car with Chuck, piling up the white tulle and satin behind her. We got to the church at 11:58. Father Whippet ran out to meet us. He practically pulled all of us from the car. “Everyone is seated. I took care of that. Jeannie, you just have to walk down the aisle when I point at you from the altar. Step, smile. Step, smile. Harold, you’ve been through this before with Elizabeth and Sammie so just same thing, different daughter.” He pointed at Chuck. “Come with me; I’ll place you. Relax, everyone, and good luck.”
Chuck went with Father Whippet, while the rest of my family raced to the front pew. Lucy, Dad, and I waited in the entry hall before walking down the aisle. Lucy gripped her bouquet and turned to look through the open doors at the backs of the hundreds of people waiting for her.
Dad walked up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Sweetheart. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Your mother and I can call the whole thing off right now. We will always love you no matter what.”
“I know,” Lucy said. “But what if I’m not sure and I call it off? What if I was meant to go through with it? If I call it off now it means that Chuck and I are done.”
“Do what’s in your heart, honey.”
I could see Father Whippet point at me. People were turning in their pews in anticipation of the processional. I stood in the open doors in full view, holding my bouquet. I glued a smile on my face. Lucy and Dad were still talking, and I was throwing frantic looks sideways at them. Was I supposed to step, smile, or not? I missed the music cue and people were starting to murmur. Father Whippet gave a hand signal to the organist and she played the last few measures over. Father Whippet pointed at me again.
I gave up and marched over to where Dad and Lucy were conferring. “Do I go or not?”
Dad kissed Lucy’s forehead and tilted up her chin. He raised his eyebrows and smiled. Lucy nodded. Dad gave me a head jerk and I resumed my place in the open doors. Father Whippet seemed downright happy to see me reappear, and he signaled to the organist, who had been treading musical water. I step-smiled down the aisle and took my place to the left of Father Whippet. Chuck was waiting on the right. While Lucy and Dad walked solemnly down the aisle I looked at the pew that held my family and studied their faces. Mom, who had been married for thirty happy and some unhappy years, looked beatific. Sammie, who was divorced, watched Lucy with a beaming smile. Elizabeth and Ron stood apart, not touching. Grandma was looking for something in her purse. A few rows behind my family, I saw Walker and his family. Walker and his dad looked tired. They probably hadn’t even been to bed. When the trout are biting they’ll go all night.
Dad delivered Lucy to Chuck, who shook his hand. Then Lucy, Chuck, and I turned toward Father Whippet. He held the book of prayer high above his head. “We are gathered here today . . .” Father Whippet began the marriage ceremony. He droned on.
Dad had only asked that the ceremony include communion. It was important to him that the entire family had the body and blood of Christ together. Father Whippet began the Nicene Creed, again lifting the prayer book above his head. “God from God, Light from Light . . .”
It was then that Lucy started to cry. Mascara was running down her face again, ruining Sammie’s makeup job. I wasn’t sure what my role was as maid of honor. Clearly Lucy wasn’t happy, but since she had her back to the church Mom and Dad didn’t know yet. Was I supposed to save her by pushing her off into the wings? She was really beginning to get going in earnest now, not quiet little girly sniffles but the kind you get when you’re alone in your bedroom and you’re hiccupping and snorting and your nose is running down your chin. Father Whippet’s microphone was now picking up the sound and echoing it around the church. Oh God. I looked back at Mom. She was halfway out of her seat but Dad pulled her back down.
Father Whippet kept right on going like nothing was happening. “Do you”—he checked his notes—“Chuck, take Lucy . . .”
Lucy’s sobs carried around the church again. People were beginning to either titter or look concerned. I knew right then we needed something badly. Kleenex. I signaled to Mom and she started rooting through her purse. She always had some balled-up piece of tissue among the Jujubes and loose tobacco. But how was I supposed to get it? March down the aisle to Mom’s pew, pick up a used tissue, and deliver it to Lucy?
I did
know where there was a mother lode of tissue. I reached over and dug into the top of Lucy’s dress. The videographer, seeing my hand in Lucy’s bra, woke up and went in for a closeup. The look I gave him made him back off. I grabbed a ball of tissue and handed it to her. She wiped her tears and stared straight ahead. Chuck was nervously clicking his mouth guard like it was dentures and the sound also reverberated throughout the church. I pulled another tissue out of the bra and handed it to my sister. She reached in for a third herself. Father Whippet had finished with Chuck and turned to Lucy. “Do you, Lucy—” he said, and then he stopped.
His jaw fell open and he dropped his notes. Lucy’s strapless dress, having lost the support of the tissue-stuffed bra, had given up its battle to stay in place. Her left titty was exposed for God and country to see. The videographer got interested again. I stepped straight in front of Lucy to block his view, grabbed the dress front and back, and yanked it up mightily. The dress stayed in place, and I kept my hand on Lucy’s back so I could tell if it was going to make a break for it again. Father Whippet had busied himself by getting on his hands and knees to gather his papers.
“It’s okay, Father Whippet. She’s covered,” I whispered down to him.
He got to his feet, brushed at his pants, and carried on with the next part of the service. Fortunately for him, and us, the singer took over and we had a few minutes to get ourselves together. “Ave Mariaaa . . .” she warbled.
I looked back at the assembled guests. I had known most of them my whole life. We had ridden bikes together, learned to drive together, argued and laughed with each other, and just about all of us had dated each other. In some cases, we knew each other’s parents almost as well as we knew our own. And I could tell you, I was grateful for my own. The Prescotts were sitting in the pew where my family normally sat. It was halfway back in the church. Not too close and not too far, which is pretty much our relationship with God.
It was the pew where I had passed out cold on Easter Sunday in seventh grade. Everyone thought it was because of too much candy. While I liked a good marshmallow chick as much as the next person, that’s not what it was. I had passed out from guilt.
It had started with a book I found buried in Sammie’s closet. A very dirty book. Then I had discovered my “joy button.” Every time I did it, I swore to God that I would never do it again. But of course, I did. That’s when I started hearing the radio ads on WTRU, the local am station. “VeeeDeee is for everybody, not just for a few,” the singer warbled away about the dangers of venereal disease. I had no idea what it was, but I was certain I had it. Otherwise, why would the ads have started just then? It was clearly a dire warning. I had to tell someone. After a few agonizing days, I cornered my mom while she was watching Jeopardy.
“Mom, can we speak alone?” I asked solemnly.
We walked back to my bedroom and sat on my bed. My mother looked at me with some amount of terror in her eyes.
“What is it, honey?”
I blurted out, “I have venereal disease.”
She regarded me, sitting on my pink bedspread clutching my stuffed kitty.
“Sweetheart, now be very honest with me. Are you sexually active?”
I hung my head. “Yes.”
“With who?”
What did she mean with who? “With myself.”
To her credit, she didn’t laugh. But I could see the tension leave her face.
“Why in the world would you think you had venereal disease?”
I told her everything. The book. The ads. God striking me down.
“Where would Sammie get a book like that?” she mused. I couldn’t believe it. She was missing the whole point.
Then she came back to the issue at hand. “What you are doing is perfectly natural. Unless you are doing it too much.”
I wondered what too much was but didn’t ask.
“You don’t have venereal disease, sweetheart. You can’t give it to yourself.” She went on for a bit more about boys and a book called Our Bodies, Ourselves and then told me that I should absolutely wait until I was married. Then she went back to watch Final Jeopardy. I was relieved I didn’t have venereal disease, but the fact remained that God must be pretty damn pissed off at me.
That Easter Sunday didn’t start out so bad. I was wearing Lucy’s navy blue dress with cherries all over it, and I had on my very first pair of nylons. L’eggs, tan-colored with a reinforced toe. It was my first time in church since my talk with Mom, and I was determined to make it up to God. We were sitting in our usual pew and I was squished between Sammie and Lucy. The prayer for forgiveness began, and I prayed as hard as I could. “We have done those things which we ought not to have done,” Father Whippet intoned, and I chanted right along with him. Then everything started to go red and black in front of my eyes.
“Sammie, I don’t feel good.”
“You’re not getting out of church that easily.”
That’s when I passed out. People later told me that I hit my head so hard on the back of the pew that the noise stopped the service, and that Dad had reached over Mom, Evan, and Sammie to grab my arm and drag me over all their bodies out into the aisle. Then he got me out of the church. Not carrying me like Scarlett O’Hara, which might have been somewhat graceful, but dragging me, facedown, by my arms. I came to on the church steps. My nylons were torn at the knees. Dad lit a cigarette and looked at me with concern.
I knew right then and there what I had to do. Or not do. I didn’t masturbate again for the next five years.
I tuned back in to the service. Father Whippet was just wrapping up with Lucy and Chuck.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present Mr. and Mrs. Chuck Tanner.”
Lucy and Chuck turned around to face the crowd. They all clapped wildly until they took in what was really being presented to them: Lucy, with her mascara-stained face, clutching the top of her dress, and Chuck, with his massive white mouth guard. The clapping faltered as the bride and groom both feebly waved to everyone. I raced to get Lucy’s wedding train out from under her feet and spread it out nicely behind her. Then they walked back down the aisle with me trailing behind.
“Where are the cars?” Mom asked, blinking in the sun.
“After we dropped you off we parked across the way.” Dad pointed. “They’re just across the Sears parking lot.” He looked around for Evan to help him but then remembered he was jetting to his honeymoon. “The other ones can help me get them. Um, Ron and um, um . . .”
“Chuck,” Sammie volunteered the name.
“Right, Chuck.”
Lucy walked up. “Let’s just walk over there. It’ll be easier.”
We straggled in our wedding finery across the dirty parking lot. We had to wait while a Ford truck backed up to the service entrance to load a refrigerator. I lifted Lucy’s train and put it over my shoulder.
“Oh, Harold, we should have had a car for them right there at the church,” Mom fretted while the wind blew her hair.
“To go less than a hundred yards?”
“It’s just not very . . . ceremonial.” Mom would continue to fret about this for the rest of the summer. The reception itself was comparatively uneventful. The guests entered our backyard and headed straight for the bar Dad had set up. But true to Dad’s prediction, people were still feeling pretty hungover from Evan’s wedding and most drank the mimosas. The tent rippled nicely in the wind. Mom eyed the poles. “It is going to stay up, isn’t it, Harold?”
“Absolutely,” Dad replied. Then he chucked me under the chin. “The question is for how long?”
“Harold! That is not funny!” Mom strode away to corral the photographer.
Dad grinned at me. “Good thing she doesn’t know I forgot to pick up the dog poop in the yard.”
I edged away from him. I envisioned myself in my couch dress stooping among the guests and picking up Buddy’s leavings.
“I’m only kidding. Can’t anyone in this family take a joke?” Dad muttered and lit a Tareyton.
Guests crowded around the buffet tables that lined two sides of the tent. Then they trickled out to the little white tables set up on the lawn. The only ones that day who ripped through the bar were Kim Barnett, Lucy’s cohort in the communion wine caper, and Teeni Patterson.
“Do you need a ride home, Teeni?” I asked politely.
“Oh no, honey. A Bloody Mary is actually just vitamins.” She waved the drink at me while crunching on the celery stick. What about six Bloody Marys? I wondered.
The men in the crowd started calling for the flinging of the garter. The chant got louder and seemed downright raucous for this hour on a Sunday afternoon. I saw my mom and Elizabeth whispering and knew what they were talking about. We sure as hell didn’t have a garter hanging around the house. That kind of thing is for people who actually take time to plan their weddings. Lucy shrugged at Chuck and an awkward silence fell over the crowd.
I had an idea and ran into the house. Scrambling through Dad’s junk drawer I actually found what I was looking for. Running back outside I pressed it into Chuck’s hand. “Throw this.” Chuck looked at it and shrugged. Then, taking careful aim, he snapped the extra-wide rubber band into the crowd. It caught Jeff Petty in the neck pretty good. It obviously stung. Jeff’s face reddened. But what the hell was he going to do? Chuck grinned at him as best he could with that thing in his mouth. Jeff smiled gamely and, rubbing his neck, went to slide the rubber band up Terri Worthington’s leg, as she had caught the bouquet. He did the stupid little dance with the “garter,” running it higher and higher up her leg. Then he went too far. He had pushed it far enough up her thigh for everyone to see the gigantic rip in her nylons. Terri gasped. People tittered. I saw the light glint off the stockings and knew she had done a pretty decent job with the clear nail polish to keep it from running farther down her leg.
“Omigod, did they get that on video?” Terri shrieked and ran into the house, followed by several concerned girlfriends. Jeff stood awkwardly in the middle of the tent until Mom walked over to him and gave him a half hug. “That was very nice, Jeff. You should be looking around at all the girls. After all, since you caught the garter, you’re next to be married.”
Born Under a Lucky Moon Page 14
