Infinity (7 page)

The night before, they’d said to count to seven after Ashley left, so I gave it eight because I was nervous and then took
my first step. I felt like the man on stilts in the circus who walks as if the wind is blowing him sideways. I tried not to
look at
anything but the middle of Ashley’s back, which was not altogether interesting but somewhat better than all the faces staring
back at me. As I got closer to the minister, I got the nerve to look up and see my father, who was standing next to his best
friend, Rick Bickman, smiling.

My father only does one impression, but it’s a good one. He can do a perfect rendition of the munchkin who greets Dorothy
right after she lands on the witch in the
Wizard of Oz
, the one who with two others sings that silly song about being the Lollipop Guild. They rock back and forth and their faces
get all contorted. My father only does this when he’s drunk or when a bunch of what my mother calls his bad-seed friends are
around; but suddenly it was all I could think of, as if at any moment he might forget all this nonsense and start singing
that damn song.

It didn’t happen, of course, because this was a wedding and serious business. Instead my father
winked at me as I took my place next to Ashley and we all turned and faced the direction we’d come and waited for Lorna Queen
to make her entrance.

There was a pause in the music, long enough for me to take a quick glance around to see if I recognized anyone, which I didn’t
because all I could see was the backs of everyone’s heads as they waited for Lorna to appear. Charlie Baker, Important Local
News Anchor, was giving her away. There had been a long story in the paper this very morning about the novelty wedding of
the sports guy and the weather girl, which went into detail about the mentoring relationship between Charlie Baker and the
intern he’d taken under his wing during her first shaky days at the station. My mother had left the article out on the kitchen
table, without comment, and as I scanned I realized it could have been about strangers for all the attachment I felt to my
father’s fairy-tale second marriage.

Lorna was beaming as she came down the aisle.
Her eyes sparkled and the waterproof mascara wasn’t holding up the way it should have but no matter – she was still beautiful.
When she and Charlie got up to the front she leaned forward and kissed Helen, then Ashley and then me, her veil scratching
my face as it brushed against me. It was the first time I’d seen Charlie Baker, anchorman, close up, and I would have bet
money he’d had a facelift sometime during those long news-doing years. He had that slippery look to him.

The minister cleared his throat, Charlie Baker handed Lorna over to my father and now, finally, it was really happening. Some
woman in the front row, wearing a purple hat, started crying immediately, and as the minister got to the vows Helen was tearing
up as well. I was bored and kept glancing around the church, wondering what my mother would think of all this, a fancy church
and a long walk down the aisle, pomp and circumstance. My parents were married in the Party Room of the Dominic Hotel
in Atlantic City, with only her mother and his parents in attendance, along with a few lost partygoers who stumbled in from
a bar mitzvah a couple of doors down. It was low-key, just what they needed, seeing that my mother’s father disapproved and
refused to attend and my father’s family couldn’t afford much more than the Party Room for a couple of hours, a cake and a
cousin playing the piano; my father had paid for the justice of the peace. There are pictures of them all around one table
together, my mother and father and grandmother and my father’s parents, plus some white-haired man in Buddy Holly glasses,
each of them with a plate of half-eaten cake before them. This was the wedding party.

I watched my father, thinking this as he said his vows, speaking evenly into Lorna’s veil with his face very red and serious.
My sister began to cry and I knew it wasn’t for the happiness of weddings but for the finality of all of this, knowing that
things would never go back to the way they were. I thought of my
mother at home in her garden, weeding under a hot afternoon sun, away from the pealing of church bells. And I thought of other
summers, long before my father lifted this veil and kissed his new bride.