Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [105]
“You’re still on that?” he asked, frankly surprised. This from the man who filled my early childhood with incessant monologues on the fundamental virtues of the American Dream, social mobility, and the chasing of falling stars. He had changed, maybe more than I thought.
“Where’s Penny?” I asked, fully aware it was a loaded question. You never knew if Dad was on his way in or out of a relationship.
“Couldn’t make it. Work’s been riding her tail real bad this year.”
“I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“What’s it been now?” he asked. “A whole year?”
“Since the Christmas before last.”
He whistled. “Hard to believe. You ought to see Marjorie now. ”
“Is she in high school?”
“Freshman year of college,” he corrected. “Eighteen going on twenty-five.”
He retrieved his wallet from his suit jacket and opened it to a picture of Penny’s daughter, a product of her first marriage. She was a masculine girl, hair like yarn, braces barely restraining a fierce overbite. “It’s an old picture, of course,” he said. “She’s a real beauty now. A total heartbreaker.”
I imagined him showing a picture of me to Marjorie, saying She’s a real beauty. A total heartbreaker.
The rehearsal was well under way. It was too rude to talk without whispering. Brian and Marie recited their vows. The minister told Brian he could kiss his bride. He dipped Marie down toward the floor and raspberried her cheek.
When the wedding planner demanded a second run-through, Grandma drafted me to photograph the event with her camera, complaining that in the chapel’s dim light she couldn’t see well enough to do it herself.
As soon as I stood, she took my seat beside Dad. She kept him busy with whispered conversation the remainder of the rehearsal. This could have been a gesture of kindness; however, she seemed more to be controlling the situation than enjoying it, like a small woman walking a very large dog, mindful of the energy on the other end of the leash but fully capable of restraining it.
At dinner afterward I saved a seat for Dad. He never showed.
———
From: gallagham@copenhagen.edu
To: iheartofu@writersnet.com
Sent: Friday 5.18.07 11: 05 PM
Subject: the Big Day
Zoë:
Eve of the wedding. Brian is with his groomsmen at the hotel and Marie is sleeping at her house. Is very quiet here now that the Sunday school ladies have left. Mom’s downstairs ironing her shawl for the third time. She’s been worrying this one particular wrinkle since noon.
Amy
———
From: iheartofu@writersnet.com
To: gallagham@copenhagen.edu
Sent: Friday 5.18.07 11: 20 PM
Subject: Re: the Big Day
Amy,
weddings are beautiful and lovely and overrated.
above all, be faithful to me. if some man sweeps you off your feet, remind him
you already have a housemate.
love
Zoë
———
I had grown up in a world that lived in perpetual anticipation of the marriage of Christ and the Church, the glorious Bride without spot and wrinkle, the wedding that would kick off eternal bliss. In this world, sex is a union of souls and every wedding a microcosm of the Great Consummation—a mystery belied by the daily mechanics of most every relationship I had ever seen and by the failure of my own parents’ marriage. And so Brian and Marie’s wedding ceremony (lovely, romantic, flawless even) seemed like just another rehearsal, a shadow or reflection of the great thing it aspired to be.
Afterward I rode with Grandma to the reception. Brian and Marie had chosen to rent out the public park beyond the schoolyard, where he and I had attended elementary school. I laughed when he told me. In my mind, the park was as it had always been: a muddy field with a rickety merry-go-round and a dandelion hill only good for dizzying, consecutive somersaults.
My skepticism was unwarranted. Over the years, the swing set had been replaced with a cast-iron sculpture of birds in flight. Carefully cubed shrubs had been planted in place of the rusted jungle gym. Now the park was pure magic. White candles in glass votives had been hung from the overhanging tree branches with white ribbon. The lights swayed in the