At Weddings and Wakes (16 page)
Read At Weddings and Wakes Online
Authors: Alice McDermott
Uncle John took Momma's elbow as the congregation stood once more but she paid no attention to him, holding the hand with the rosaries tightly against her waist. His wife had proved to be plump and somewhat pretty, a blonde in a shiny pink dress that made a soft satiny pillow of her round belly. She had pale white skin dotted with rouge, bright red lipstick, and a happy, startled look about her big blue eyes. She'd said little this morning, smiling and nodding over her lipstick-stained teacup, adding a cheery “Yeah, oh yeah” to what seemed to the children to be any conversation that would accept it. Whenever she'd looked at them she'd winked and smiled and wrinkled her eyes. Their father had driven her and her children to the church from Momma's place and tonight when they left Brooklyn the smell of her perfume would still be in his car.
Up on the altar, Aunt May and Uncle John raised their chins and closed their eyes, opening their mouths for Communion. Then the priest walked to their mother and the best man. Uncle John suddenly stoodâfor a moment the children thought he mistakenly believed it was time to goâstepped out of the pew and then stepped back to help Momma out. He followed her to the altar rail, where mother and son knelt side by side, their broad straight backs so similar that everyone in the congregation who knew it considered the fact that he alone of all of them was her full flesh and bloodâas if the spinal cord itself were the vehicle of the entire genetic code.
Momma stood again, pushing off from the rail, and as she briefly faced the children as she walked back to her pew, her face seemed as beautiful and severe as they had ever seen it. “From such moments as these,” the boy thought, turning the phrase over in his memory, imagining how it would serve him in the future. Uncle John followed his mother, his eyes on his clasped hands.
And then their father was standing in the pew and whispering, Go on, go on, raising the kneeling bench with his instep, and Aunt Agnes behind them was touching the younger girl's shoulder, Go on.
Other people, strangers, were filing out of the pew across from theirs and going to the altar, and as they joined them the children saw how Fred had risen from his kneeling bench and returned to his high-backed chair while Aunt May still knelt, her face in her hands, the clean soles of her new shoes pointing toward them.
They knelt themselves, just as the broad fragrant robes of the priest descended on them, pushing with what seemed a sudden haste the brittle Host onto their tongues. They rose again and, in the confusion of the other wedding guests now standing shoulder to shoulder behind them (Aunt Arlene with her satin-pillow tummy and her two tall children among them), turned this way and that, the two girls nearly walking into each other, before their father held out his arm and showed them the way to go.
It was this confusion and the new energy it inspired, as well as the pale, perfumed breeze set up by the wedding guests as they moved back and forth past their pew, that got the children giggling, poking each other with their elbows as they knelt to place their faces into their palms. Into the blackness of her cupped hands, the older girl let out a single, breathy laugh and received for it as she turned to slide back into her
seat a look from Aunt Agnes, shot over her own folded hands as she knelt behind them, that would have melted lead.
seat a look from Aunt Agnes, shot over her own folded hands as she knelt behind them, that would have melted lead.
Now the remaining wedding guests left the Communion rail and made their way back down the aisle, moving their sealed lips in the mute and unconscious way of Communicants, as if the Host in their mouths had left them struggling with something they could not say. (The boy nudged his sister and then moved his closed lips up and down in imitation of one of them but she felt her aunt's blue eyes on the back of her neck and so only turned away.)
With his hand on his breast and the golden chalice held delicately before him, an altar boy close to his heels, the priest moved swiftly up the bone-pale steps of the altar, where still, still, Aunt May knelt in her post-Communion prayer. Ascending the stair, the priest briefly touched her on the shoulder and she turned her face up to him as she had done to receive Communion. He paused, seemed to pull himself short, and then bent to whisper something to her, Fred all the while sitting alone behind her, his hands on his thighs and his face so sympathetic and confused that, watching him, the best man, unaccountably, felt his heart sink.
She nodded at what the priest said and then briefly bowed her head, blessed herself, and rose into her high-backed chair. In another chair just behind hers their mother quickly leaned forward, flourishing a white tissue. Aunt May took it from her, held it to her eyes and her nose, and then balled it in her hand.
On the altar, the priest was tidying up, finishing off the wine and wiping out the chalice with his sacred cloth. As he began his final prayers the congregation stood, Aunt May and her mailman once more side by side, her arm in its white sleeve brushing his as they all made the sign of the cross beneath the priest's blessing. She turned once more to accept
her small bouquet from their mother and then the priest said, in English, “Well, go ahead, man, give her a kiss,” and the two leaned toward each other. It was not the soft embrace a bride in a white gown would have received from her young husband but a brief, even hasty meeting of lips, his hands on her elbows, hers on his arms, that a long married couple might exchange on the verge of some unexpected parting.
her small bouquet from their mother and then the priest said, in English, “Well, go ahead, man, give her a kiss,” and the two leaned toward each other. It was not the soft embrace a bride in a white gown would have received from her young husband but a brief, even hasty meeting of lips, his hands on her elbows, hers on his arms, that a long married couple might exchange on the verge of some unexpected parting.
The notes of the organ seemed to build a staircase in the bleached air above their heads and then to topple it over as Aunt May and Fred walked down the steps, through the altar rail, and out over the white carpet to the door. Their mother followed, looking a little more like herself now, except for the fact that she was on the arm of a stranger.
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In the dark vestibule where racks of white pamphlets offered help in crisis and comfort in sorrow, rules of church order and brief, inspiring narratives of the lives of the saints, Aunt May stood beside her mailman, a married woman now, and greeted her guests. The doors of the church were open but no light reached her where she stood, smiling and nodding and lifting her cheek to be kissed. She touched the children's faces as they filed by but had no words for them, it seemed, although they heard Fred tell someone in the line behind them, “Her sister's kids, she's wild about them,” and felt themselves some trepidation that their aunt's careful affection for them had been so boisterously revealed.
Outside, the July sun seemed to cancel even the recollection of the church's cool interior. The heat had descended in the last hour and was rising now in bars of quivering light from asphalt and stone and the roofs of parked cars. Now the brightly dressed wedding guests were milling about, the men squinting into the sun and the women pulling at the fronts of their dresses as if to settle themselves more comfortably into
them. Their father passed around a bag of rice. A man beside them shook a handful of it in his fist as if he were about to throw a pair of dice.
them. Their father passed around a bag of rice. A man beside them shook a handful of it in his fist as if he were about to throw a pair of dice.
Aunt May and her husband stood before the heavy door of the church for a moment as the photographer crouched before them in the sun. Then their mother and the best man were brought in, then the priest, now shed of his white vestments, then Momma and Veronica and Aunt Agnes, who would appear in the photographs to be solemnly preoccupied, looking, it would seem, toward some distant horizon.
Arm in arm, heads bent against the sudden white rain, the wedding party hurried down the steps and through the stone gates and out into the waiting limousine, all the guests trailing behind them, throwing rice, waving and laughing and calling goodbye with such enthusiasm that the younger girl thought for a moment that she had somehow misunderstood the protocol and this was, after all, the last of the bride and the groom that would be seen. As their car drove away she brushed the grains of rice that had stuck to her damp palm and then saw how all the others were doing the same, brushing at palms or suit skirts, shaking caught rice from their hair, quieted now and somehow desolate. There was a crumpled paper tissue in the gutter.
But then Aunt Agnes began giving ordersâJohnny, help Momma into the car. Arlene, you'll come with us. Bob, Mr. Doran here will follow you. Who else needs directions?âand the children found themselves rushing after their father over the gray, erupting sidewalk, their two new cousins in tow.
It was their father who started the horn-blowing, leaning playfully on his steering wheel as he maneuvered the car into the street and getting the man behind him to do the same. They pulled up in back of the limo that carried Uncle John and his wife as well as Momma and Veronica and Agnes, and
even the limo driver, glancing into his rearview mirror, tapped his horn a few times. And then the other guests, pulling out of parking spaces on other streets, began to do the same and the children, excited by the wild cacophony, by the mad hunch of their father's shoulders as he pounded the horn, put their hands to their ears and shouted loud, nonsensical objections, amazed at the volume they and the cars had attained, at the sheer bravura, in this hot sun and after the wedding ceremony's cool solemnity, of the noise they were making, a noise that seemed to defy not only the heat and the lingering holiness but that encroaching sense of desolation as well. Laughing, their hands to their ears, they hoped that Aunt May could hear them from whatever street she was now on.
even the limo driver, glancing into his rearview mirror, tapped his horn a few times. And then the other guests, pulling out of parking spaces on other streets, began to do the same and the children, excited by the wild cacophony, by the mad hunch of their father's shoulders as he pounded the horn, put their hands to their ears and shouted loud, nonsensical objections, amazed at the volume they and the cars had attained, at the sheer bravura, in this hot sun and after the wedding ceremony's cool solemnity, of the noise they were making, a noise that seemed to defy not only the heat and the lingering holiness but that encroaching sense of desolation as well. Laughing, their hands to their ears, they hoped that Aunt May could hear them from whatever street she was now on.
Their cousinsâRosemary and Patrick were their namesâsat beside their father in the front seat, and when the horns finally died down he began to shout questions at them, as if he had been directed by Aunt Agnes herself to keep this morning's silence at bay. The cousins answered that she was a freshman at Notre Dame Academy, he an eighth-grader at Saint Stanislaus. She played basketball and he liked bowling. They had an uncle who lived in Brooklyn but they weren't sure where, they'd only visited him once or twice. It wasn't around here, though. She had once been to Girl Scout camp on Long Island. She'd loved everything about it but the jellyfishâa remark that seemed to delight their father, although the two girls in the back seat noted that he'd never found it so delightful when each summer they said much the same.
Looking out the car windows, the children saw that the heat had succeeded in changing the day into something ordinary. The shops they passed were busy with people, people who seemed to move in clumps, brushing their thick, bared arms together and scuffing their feet against one another's heels. Bins of towels and fruit and racks of clothing had oozed
out of the stores toward the street and the sun was blasting the sidewalks and sending steam through the manholes. Even a fire hydrant had burst under its weight. A thin park sat perfectly still in the heat, the sunlight through its weak trees scattered across the ground like debris. They drove on. “Where's Mom?” the younger girl asked and their father answered that she was off with Fred and Aunt May and Mr. Sheehy the best man, getting her picture taken. “For posterity,” he said. “So years from now we can look at them all and see how we've aged.”
out of the stores toward the street and the sun was blasting the sidewalks and sending steam through the manholes. Even a fire hydrant had burst under its weight. A thin park sat perfectly still in the heat, the sunlight through its weak trees scattered across the ground like debris. They drove on. “Where's Mom?” the younger girl asked and their father answered that she was off with Fred and Aunt May and Mr. Sheehy the best man, getting her picture taken. “For posterity,” he said. “So years from now we can look at them all and see how we've aged.”
They drove across a series of shaded streets and then once more pulled up behind the limousine, this time in front of a small brick restaurant with a long maroon awning that stretched to the curb. Momma and Veronica, Arlene and John were already under it, and their father turned to say the children should follow them while he parked.
Inside, it was cool and dark, a hushed, wood-paneled place flanked by two dim dining rooms set for lunch and lit, like a library or a pulpit, with thin, shaded tubes of light. Only Aunt Agnes was there, speaking quietly to a tall man in a dark suit who had his head lowered, his ear to her mouth like a priest in a confessional. “Very good,” the children heard him whisper, nodding, his hands clasped before him. “Very good.” And then he quickly stood erectâthey would not have been surprised to see him genuflectâelegantly raised one hand toward a white-jacketed waiter in one corner of the dark room and stepped back to let Aunt Agnes proceed. She turned brieflyâuntil that moment the children had not known for certain that she knew they were thereâand said, “Come along.” The tall maître d' smiling kindly at them, nodding still, as they filed past.
The restaurant seemed to grow both cooler and darker as they proceeded, as if they were descending into a catacomb.
They passed the two dining rooms, went down a narrow corridor and across a carpeted anteroom and then through a set of double doors where they suddenly found daylight again, pouring from four plain rectangular windows across one wall of a wide but cozy room, reflecting just as brightly from the semicircle of polished parquet floor at its center and making a black silhouette of the five-tiered wedding cake in the middle of the room.
They passed the two dining rooms, went down a narrow corridor and across a carpeted anteroom and then through a set of double doors where they suddenly found daylight again, pouring from four plain rectangular windows across one wall of a wide but cozy room, reflecting just as brightly from the semicircle of polished parquet floor at its center and making a black silhouette of the five-tiered wedding cake in the middle of the room.
Aunt Agnes paused, all of them halted behind her. There was one long table at the head of the dance floor and then, on the carpet that surrounded it, a number of others covered in long white cloths and topped with baby's breath and roses. There was a bar to the far right, a portable thing about the size of an upright piano and manned already by another man in a short white jacket. There was a real piano to the far left, a small baby grand, a set of drums, and a folding chair that held a trumpet case. The three men who were to play moved toward their instruments when they saw her, themselves made shadowy by the bright sun.
Agnes raised a gloved hand to her brow, squinted, and then began to speak without turning toward anyone. The maître d' quickly stepped forward, bending, nodding, and then once more raised his hand. Suddenly two pale opaque curtains moved across the windowed wall and in just the moment before they met the children realized that the blue they'd been seeing was not merely sky but water: that the place was on the river or the sea.
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