Slightly Married (17 page)

Uh-oh. I’m not so sure Jack is going to go for that. I mean, he’s so close to his own mother, he might not feel comfortable calling somebody else
Mom
.

In my family, that’s as much a tradition as it is for the bride to exchange her maiden name for her husband’s.

Tracey Candell.

That’ll be me before the year is out.

Which reminds me…

“We’ve got to go make arrangements for the reception as soon as we’re done eating,” I tell Jack, who’s looking a little dizzy amid the frenzy.

“Get the champagne glasses, Connie,” my father directs. “I want to toast Jack and Tracey.”

“With what?”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it covered. I’ve had a couple of bottles of Asti Spumante out in the trunk of the Buick since December. Don’t worry, it doesn’t freeze,” he says, seeing the look on Jack’s face. “But if you didn’t get your butt in gear, I was going to have to move it into the fridge. Then Connie would have been all nosy.”

“Me? Nosy?” Ma laughs as if she’s never heard such a ridiculous thing in her life, and opens the hutch to start handing out mismatched champagne flutes she’s accumulated through the years.

I get one that was a favor from my cousin’s wedding; it’s etched
Mario and Loretta, 5-16-99.

Yes, they’re still married. I take that as a good omen.

Pop fills everyone’s flute with sparkling wine. I’m sure Jack’s father toasts with Moët or Veuve Cliquot, but this is the sweetest wine—and toast—ever.

“To my beautiful daughter Tracey, and to her future husband, Jack.” Pop’s voice is a little hoarse. “May your lives be blessed with riches—and by that I don’t mean diamonds and gold, I mean love, health and children. Because in the end, that’s all that counts.
Cent’ anni
. That means a hundred years,” he adds for Jack’s benefit.

“
Cent’ anni
,” we all echo, clinking glasses all around and sipping contentedly.

For once, I think, smiling so hard my face hurts, something has lived up to my expectations.

8

“S
o when’s the wedding?” Michaela wants to know as we set down our champagne flutes and pick up our forks at last.

“October,” Jack says promptly, as if it’s all settled.

“We
hope
,” I speak up hastily. “We’ve got to make the arrangements while we’re here today.”

“I’ll go call Father Stefan.” My mother is already on her feet. “I’ll see if he can meet us before four-thirty mass.”

“Connie, sit down and eat,” my father says, but my mother is already scurrying to the phone in the kitchen.

Sara looks at me. “I really hope you were planning on getting married at Most Precious Mother,” she says dryly, “because if you’re not…”

“Where else would they get married, babe?” Joey says, retrieving his son’s tossed sippy cup from the floor.

“I don’t know…the Beaver Club?”

I don’t dare look at Jack. “I’ll be right back,” I say, setting down my fork and pushing back my chair.

“Where are you going?” Mary Beth asks.

“Bathroom.”

“You are not.”

She’s right. I’m not.

In the kitchen, I find my mother already hanging up the phone. “It’s all set,” she tells me. “We’re meeting with Father Stefan in forty-five minutes at the rectory because he has another appointment later.”

“We?”

“You, me, and if Jack wants to come, he can.”

“Don’t you think he should?” I ask wryly. “Being the groom and all?”

“Do you think he wants to convert?”

“
What?
” Where did
that
come from?

“Jack. Is he going to convert?” she asks as if that’s the most logical question ever.

“No,” I say firmly. “And please don’t start with that, Ma.”

“I was just asking.”

“Why were you asking?”

“Father Stefan wanted to know.”

I sigh. This meeting is going to be one big happyfest. I can tell already.

“Did you ever check with Jack to see if he’s willing to convert?” my mother persists, because that, and cooking, are what she does best.

“No.”

“Then how do you know—”

“Can we please just talk about this later, Ma? Because I have to go to the bathroom.”

She shrugs and returns to the dining room with a Saran-covered platter of something because she never walks out of the kitchen empty-handed when there are guests in the house.

I immediately pick up the phone and dial the number for Shorewood, which I long ago committed to memory. I ask to speak with the banquet manager, but wouldn’t you know he won’t be in for another hour?

“Can you do me a favor,” I ask the girl on the phone, “and just check to see if the third Saturday in October is still available for a wedding?”

“Sure, hang on.”

I do, holding my breath, praying
“pleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod,”
until she comes back on the phone.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s booked.”

Exhale.

Thank her.

“Then is there anything available that Friday night?” I ask hopefully. “Or Sunday?”

“Everything’s booked here right through New Year’s,” she informs me. “That’s our busy season. We might have a Saturday in mid-January…”

I weigh my opposition to crepe-paper-festooned basketball hoops against the odds of a January Buffalo blizzard stranding the bride and groom, most of the wedding party and half the guest list in New York.

“No, thanks,” I tell Shorewood Country Club, and feel like I’m enduring the second most heart-wrenching breakup of my life.

I slink back to dining room, mission unaccomplished.

Now what?

Crepe-paper-festooned basketball hoops, here I come.

By the time we’re finished eating that enormous meal followed by coffee and dessert—homemade canoli—wouldn’t you know there’s just no time to do the dishes.

“Leave them for me.” That’s resident dish-doer Connie Spadolini, already slipping into her good brown tweed dress coat and grabbing her tan vinyl purse.

“Ma, don’t be silly. We’re not going to leave them for you,” Mary Beth protests. “We’ll do them.”

By “we” she means herself and our three sisters-in-law, because my father and brothers are immune to kitchen work. Imagine my mother’s surprise—and dismay—when Jack started clearing the table the first time he visited.

“Jack, put that down right now!” she’d commanded, as if he were a toddler and the Corning Ware casserole dish were priceless crystal. “You go sit down. Tracey and I will get the dishes.”

He’d tried to argue with her, but soon figured out that it’s useless. She absolutely refuses to let him—or any man—touch a thing in the kitchen, unless it’s food itself.

Crazy, I know. But somehow, the residents of Brookside—or at least, the Spadolini segment of the population—seem to have missed the entire women’s lib movement. Back in the seventies, while the rest of her gender were burning their bras and demanding equal pay for equal work, my mother was bustling around in her apron frying onions and garlic, serving up elaborate meals, scrubbing pots with Brillo and I’m sure secretly longing for a dishwasher.

Pop got her one as an anniversary present—their twentieth, it must have been, because I was just a kid. I’ve never seen her so exhilarated. Watching her hug and kiss my father, I thought it was the most romantic thing he could have done.

Then I grew up and realized the most romantic thing he could have done was learn how to load, run and unload it once in a while.

But some things just don’t change, and I honestly don’t think my parents want them to. They’re comfortable with things the way they are.

As for my brothers, they might get away with sitting on their butts after meals in our mother’s house, but I know for a fact that my sisters-in-law don’t let them do it at home.

The drive over to the church rectory literally takes two minutes. Ma sits in the front with Jack and I sit in back trying to figure out whether I’d rather A) postpone the wedding for a year or B) have the reception at Most Precious Mother church hall or—God help me—the Beaver Club, after all.

None of the above
, I think glumly as we pull into the empty parking lot.

I really had my heart set on that Saturday at Shorewood. I was so sure it was meant to be, especially when they had that last-minute cancellation and the date opened up again after all. I took that as a positive sign.

What if it’s a bad omen that the date is booked again?

I don’t know, maybe it’s for the best. After all, how were we going to pay for it even if it wasn’t booked?

I mean, it’s not like I expected my parents to hand over a check for thousands to put toward a deposit.

I guess I just figured the problem would somehow work itself out if I ignored it. We’d head over to Shorewood to book the date and
poof!
A bundle of cash would materialize.

Very realistic, I know.

But a girl can believe in miracles, can’t she?

A girl can dream.

A girl can completely delude herself into thinking that she won’t be forced to begin married life on the same basketball-court-slash-dance-floor where she once threw up after too much zau-zage and birch beer at a CYO mixer.

Jack parks behind the rectory and comes around to open the passenger’s-side door for Ma, then the rear door for me.

“Whatever happens in there,” I whisper to him as we hurry through the chill toward the door, “don’t let them talk you into converting.”

“Are they going to lash me to a pew and brainwash me?” he asks dryly.

That’s one of the things I love about Jack. It takes a lot to throw him.

Unlike me. I get thrown by the slightest bump in the road.

Not that Shorewood being booked is a slight bump. More like a major pothole. But for now, I need to sidestep it and move on, because Father Stefan is opening the door.

He’s pretty young for a priest—early forties—but he’s been here at our parish since before I left Brookside. Naturally, we’re on hugging terms; he’s spent many a Sunday afternoon at the Spadolini dining-room table eating spaghetti and playing Michigan rummy.

He’s got less hair and more face than he did the last time I saw him, and he smells kind of sacred yet musty: incense. Now that we’re out of my mother’s house, I can smell the garlic-and-meatball smell wafting strongly from the three of us.

Mental note: do not let Ma cook anything on wedding day, lest people smell fried onions when they kiss the bride.

“Tracey! I hear we’ve got cause to celebrate,” Father Stefan says warmly. “And this must be Jack.”

“Nice to meet you, Father.” Jack politely shakes his hand.

Father Stefan invites us into his study to chat. The three of us sit on the nubby maroon couch facing him. On the wall behind him is the biggest, most grisly crucifix I’ve ever seen; I can’t seem to drag my gaze away from the plaster blood and gore.

“When did you want to get married?” The priest is flipping through the pages of a big leather-bound desk calendar.

“Around the third weekend in October.” Finally, I turn away from the bloody pulp that is Christ’s left hand and watch Father Stefan flip to the right page.

“Let’s see, I’ve got a twelve o’clock wedding that Saturday. You can have the two-thirty slot. Oh, and I’ll put you in touch with the noon bride so you can make arrangements to share flowers.”

“Share flowers?” I echo.

“You would split the cost,” he says. “It’s more economical that way.”

Economical? He says it in his pious way, insinuating—at least to me—that being economical is my Christian duty.

“But…” What does one say to such a bizarre suggestion? “Wouldn’t that be kind of…bizarre?”

“Not at all. That’s how it’s usually done these days.”

Maybe in Brookside. But I’d be willing to bet that nowhere else on the planet do brides form floral teams with complete strangers.

My mother is nodding vigorously as she echoes the priest very reverently, “It’s so economical.”

Call me a selfish spendthrift infidel, but…“What if the noon bride doesn’t want the same flowers or color scheme that I want?”

Father Stefan assures me, “I’m sure you can come to an agreement together.”

He is? Because I’m really not feeling it.

“The savings are significant,” he adds.

I look at Jack, who shrugs. I look at my mother, who is smiling happily.

Well, of course. Who doesn’t love economical savings and God?

She’s probably wondering if Noon Bride and I are the same size, and how long Noon Bride plans on wearing her gown after the ceremony, in case we can share that, too.

“She’s away on a eucharistic ministers’ retreat this weekend and won’t be back until Monday morning,” Father Stefan is saying cryptically.

“Who’s away?” I ask, wondering what I missed and afraid of the answer.

“Mary. The bride who will be sharing the flowers with you.”

Noon Bride again. Don’t you hate her? Especially now that we know her name is Mary and she’s a eucharistic minister spending her entire weekend at a religious retreat. She’s making me look bad.

“I don’t know,” I say with a slightly defiant lift of my chin. “I think I’ll just do my own flowers.”

“Tracey!” my mother exclaims, as though I’ve just announced I don’t believe in the Immaculate Conception.

“It’s all right, Connie.” Father Stefan writes something on the page.

Probably
Bride is Uncooperative and Extravagant
.

As he closes the calendar and swivels his chair to open a file cabinet, I sneak another peek at Jack, who probably wouldn’t care if we festooned the altar in wilted dandelions.

He smiles encouragingly, though, and I feel a little better.

Father Stefan attaches a form to a clipboard and picks up a pen. “All right, I need to take down some information. Bride’s name…we know that.” He writes it down. “Bride’s phone number?”

I give him my cell, since I’m rarely home these days. Not that I expect to be in regular hands-on communication with my home parish over the next seven months….

Or should I?

“Bride’s address?”