Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [106]
I worried that enjoying the reception would be a betrayal of Zoë, but despite my best attempts to remain ironically aloof, the festivity worked its way into my blood. Soon I was laughing, enjoying myself. My brother was charming in his tux and well-gelled hair. Marie had lost the anxiety that shaded her face all through the day’s preparations and the aftermath of the ceremony. Everyone seemed happy and relaxed. Everyone was, for that fleeting moment, beautiful. The sun set, but we were too busy to notice. Our plates were miraculously cleared away, carried off, perhaps, by fairies from the trees.
The dancing began shortly after sunset. The crowd was small, most guests married and thereby consigned to one partner, the rest faithful members of the First Fundamentalist Church of God and therefore forbidden to dance at all. As such, there was a severe shortage of male partners. I sat on one of the folding chairs lining the pavilion, watching the fun and trying to be philosophic about it: Elizabeth Bennet didn’t have anyone to dance with either, and look what that started.
Grandma came and sat beside me. “The ceremony was lovely, wasn’t it?” she asked.
“It was.”
For a moment her smile faltered. “It’s all over so quickly.”
“I know. Say a few vows and you’re married. Hard to believe how much work goes into half an hour.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she replied. “Look at Brian.”
He was dancing with the flower girl, who stood with her feet on his. I used to dance that way with my father. It gave me a fleeting vision of Brian with children of his own. Aunt Amy, I thought, trying it on for size.
“I always knew he was going to be a romantic,” Grandma said. “It was the way he cared for your mother even as a little boy. Remember how he always bought her flowers on Valentine’s Day? All the way up to high school?”
I spent a moment remembering.
“He will make Marie a happy woman,” she concluded.
“Grandma, can I ask you something?”
“Sure, Sugarpie. What is it?”
The blue balls dangling from her earrings swayed on her old earlobes. They made me think of little planets.
“Did Dad make Mom happy? Ever?”
My grandmother did not reply immediately, blindsided by the question. No one in my family discussed my parents’ marriage. Ever. A part of me wanted to take it back, to apologize for ruining the evening. But there was my father, eating cheddar cubes off toothpicks and presiding over the wedding with a certain kind of pride despite the fact that he’d missed every other monumental moment in my brother’s life. And as always we accommodated his presence. We remained somehow righteous in our indifference, as if silence were sufficient absolution for the sins of the past.
Grandma leaned back in her chair with a heavy sigh.
“Your mother was very much in love with Darren once,” she said.
“Did he make her happy?”
“Sometimes.”
“She never talked about him,” I said. “All my childhood. All through high school. And she was aloof at best when he came by— like he was a stranger from the church who had come to visit. She never seemed shaken by his presence.”
“That’s because she didn’t want to worry you kids,” Grandma said. “Don’t underestimate your mother. It took a lot of work for her to hold it together back then. A lot of work.”
“I just don’t understand why she refuses to talk about the past. We have a right to know.”
“Did you ever think that maybe this isn’t about you?”
But something in me protested:To some extent it was about me. It was my mother who had been left, and my home that had been abandoned. He left me too, and after all these years I wanted someone to acknowledge the hurt, to let me know it was only natural to find myself still daily dressing a childhood wound.
“Maybe she just wants to be happy,” Grandma said. “After all these years, it’s finally her turn.”
We were both thinking the same thing.
“She’s really fallen for Richard, hasn’t she?” I asked.
“He worships