Vinegar Girl (15 page)

He led them down a narrow corridor to a small room crammed with books. Books overflowed the shelves and towered in piles on the desk and the seats of the two folding chairs and even the floor. Only the swivel chair behind the desk was usable, but Uncle Theron must have felt that it would have been rude to sit down and let the three of them remain standing. He leaned back against the front of his desk, half sitting on the edge of it, and plucked a book from the top of one stack and opened it to a dog-eared page. “Now, the beginning,” he said, running a finger along one line. “ ‘Dearly beloved’ and such. You have no objection to that, I assume.”

“No, that’s okay.”

“And should I ask, ‘Who gives this woman?’ ”

Dr. Battista drew a breath to answer, but Kate jumped in with “No!” so she didn’t hear whatever it was that he had planned to say.

“And I’m guessing we’ll do without the promise to obey—knowing you, Kate, heh-heh. Well, in fact almost no one keeps the ‘obey’ in, these days. We’ll just proceed straight to ‘For better or worse.’ Will ‘For better or worse’ be all right?”

“Oh, sure,” Kate said.

It was nice of him to be so accommodating, she thought. He hadn’t said a word about the Battistas’ known lack of religion.

“You’d be surprised at what some couples want omitted nowadays,” he said, closing the book and laying it aside. “And then the vows they write for
themselves
: some of those you wouldn’t believe. Such as ‘I promise not to talk more than five minutes a day about the cute things the dog did.’ ”

“You’re kidding,” Kate said.

“I’m not, I’m afraid.”

She wondered if she could get Pyotr to promise to stop quoting proverbs.

“How about photographs?” Dr. Battista asked.

“How about them?” Uncle Theron said.

“May I take some? During the vows?”

“Well, I suppose so,” Uncle Theron said. “But these are very
brief
vows.”

“That’s all right. I’d just like to get, you know, a record. And maybe you could snap a photo of the four of us together, afterward.”

“Certainly,” Uncle Theron said. He looked at his watch. “Well! All we need now is a groom.”

It was 11:20, Kate already knew, because she had just checked her own watch. They had arranged to do this at 11:00. But her father said confidently, “He’ll be along.”

“Is he bringing the license?”

“I have it.” Dr. Battista pulled it from his inner breast pocket and handed it to him. “Then on Monday we’ll get things started with Immigration.”

“Well, let’s go ahead to the chapel where you can all wait more comfortably, shall we?”

“They have to be actually married before they can apply,” Dr. Battista said. “It needs to be a
fait accompli
, evidently.”

“Have you met Miss Brood?” Uncle Theron asked. He had stopped at another doorway leading off from the corridor. A pale woman in her mid-forties, her short fair hair drawn girlishly back from her forehead with a blue plastic barrette, glanced up from her desk and smiled at them. “Miss Brood is my right hand,” he told them. “She’s here seven days a week sometimes, and it’s only a part-time position. Avis, this is my niece Kate, who’s getting married today, and her sister, Bunny, and my brother-in-law, Louis Battista.”

“Congratulations,” Miss Brood said, rising from her chair. She had turned a bright pink, for some reason. She was one of those people who look teary-eyed when they blush.

“Tell them how you got the name ‘Avis,’ ” Uncle Theron said. Then, without waiting for her to speak, he said to the others, “She was delivered in a rental car.”

“Oh, Reverend Dell,” Miss Brood said with a tinkly laugh. “They don’t want to hear about that!”

“It was an unexpected birth,” Uncle Theron explained. “Unexpectedly rapid, that is. Of course the birth itself was expected.”

“Well, naturally! It’s not as if Mama
intended
to have me in the car,” Miss Brood said.

Dr. Battista said, “Thank God it wasn’t a Hertz.”

Miss Brood gave another tinkly laugh, but she kept her eyes on Uncle Theron. She was fiddling with the strand of white glass beads at her throat.

“Well, moving right along…” Uncle Theron said.

Miss Brood went on smiling as she lowered herself to her chair again with a scooping motion at the back of her skirt. Uncle Theron led the rest of them on down the corridor.

The chapel itself, which Kate had seen on several long-ago Christmas Eves and Easter Sundays, was a modern-looking space, with wall-to-wall beige carpeting and plain clear windows and blond wooden pews. “Why don’t you all have a seat,” Uncle Theron told them, “and I’ll head back to my office where I can hear when Pyoder knocks.”

Kate had been worrying about that—whether they might miss Pyotr’s knock—so she was glad to see him go. Also, they wouldn’t have to make small talk if they were on their own. They could sit in silence.

She listened closely to her uncle’s footsteps receding down the corridor, because she was wondering if he would pause or at least slow down as he approached Miss Brood’s doorway. But no, he hurried right past, oblivious.

“This church is where your mother and I were married,” Dr. Battista said.

Kate was startled. She had never thought to ask where they had married.

Bunny said, “Really, Papa? Was it a big fancy wedding with bridesmaids?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, she had her heart set on the whole damn farce,” he said. “And Theron had just been hired here as assistant pastor, so nothing would do but that he should officiate. My sister had to come all the way from Massachusetts, bringing my mother. My mother was still alive in those days though not in the best of health, but oh, it was ‘We need to have your family at this’ and ‘Haven’t you got any friends? Any colleagues?’ My postdoc served as my best man, I seem to recall.”

He rose and began pacing up and down the center aisle. He always grew restless when he had to sit idle for any time. Kate looked toward the pulpit, which was made of the same blond wood as the pews. A gigantic book, presumably a Bible, lay open on top of it, with several red ribbon bookmarks hanging out of it, and in front of the pulpit was a low wooden altar with a vase of white tulips centered on a doily. She tried to picture her mother standing there as a bride with a younger, less stuffy version of her father, but all she could summon up was the image of a limp invalid in a long white dress, alongside a bald and stooped Dr. Battista consulting his wristwatch.

A text message came in for Bunny; Kate recognized the tweeting sound. Bunny drew her phone from her purse and looked at it and giggled.

Their father stopped beside a pew and took a leaflet from the hymnal rack. He studied the front of it and the back, and then he returned it to the rack and resumed pacing.

“I hope nothing’s gone wrong at the lab,” he told Kate the next time he passed her.

“What could go wrong?” she asked him.

She honestly wanted to know, because whatever it was would be preferable to Pyotr’s simply deciding he found it too off-putting to marry her no matter how advantageous it was. “Would not be worth it,” she could hear him saying. “Such a
difficult
girl! So unmannerly.”

But all her father said was “Anything could go wrong. Any number of things. Oh, I had a feeling I shouldn’t leave it in Pyoder’s hands! I realize the fellow’s phenomenally able, but still, he isn’t me, after all.”

Then he continued toward the rear of the church.

Bunny was typing a text now.
Tap-tap-tap,
as rapid as the telegraph keys in old movies, using both her thumbs and hardly needing to look at the screen.

Eventually, Uncle Theron reappeared. “So…” he called from the doorway. He walked toward the pew where Bunny and Kate were sitting, and Dr. Battista reversed course to join them.

“So, does Pyoder have to come from very far away?” Uncle Theron asked.

“Just my lab,” Dr. Battista told him.

“Is he subject to a foreign standard of time?”

He was looking at Kate as he asked this. She said, “A foreign…? Well, maybe. I’m not sure.”

Then she realized from his expression that she
ought
to be sure, if they had been dating for long. She would have to remember that for their interview with Immigration. “Oh, he’s hopeless!” she would say merrily. “I tell him we’re due at our friends’ house at six and he doesn’t even start dressing till seven.”

If they ever actually got so far as an interview.

“Perhaps a phone call to find out if he needs directions,” Uncle Theron said.

It was silly of her, she knew, but Kate didn’t want to make a phone call. She was reminded of those obsessive discussions that girls had in seventh grade—how they wouldn’t like to be seen “chasing a boy.” Even if this was the boy (so to speak) who was marrying her, it felt wrong. Let him show up as late as he liked! See if
she
cared.

Lamely, she said, “He’s probably on the road. I wouldn’t want to distract him.”

“Just send him a text,” Bunny told her.

“Well, um…”

Bunny clucked and returned her phone to her purse and then held a hand toward Kate, palm up. Kate stared at it a moment before she understood. Then, as slowly as possible, she dug her own phone from her tote and passed it over.

Tap-tap-tap,
Bunny went, without even seeming to think about it. Kate sent a sidelong glance toward what she was writing. “Where r u,” she read, beneath the last message Pyotr had sent Kate, which dated from a couple of days ago and said simply, “Okay bye.”

This seemed significant now.

No answer. None of those little dots, even, that meant he was working on an answer. They all looked helplessly at Uncle Theron. “Perhaps a phone call?” he suggested again.

Kate steeled herself and took her phone back from Bunny. At the same instant, it made a soft swooping sound, which startled her so that she fumbled and dropped it, but only in her lap, luckily. Bunny gave another cluck and picked it up. “ ‘A terrible event,’ ” she read out.

Their father said, “What!” He leaned past Uncle Theron and grabbed the phone out of Bunny’s hand and stared at it. Then he started typing. Just with one index finger, it was true, but still, Kate was impressed. They all watched him. Finally he said, “
Now
what do I do?”

“What do you mean, what do you do?” Bunny asked him.

“How do I send it?”

Bunny tsked and took the phone from him and punched the screen. Peering over her shoulder, Kate read their father’s message: “What what what.”

There was a wait. Dr. Battista was breathing oddly.

Then another swooping sound. “ ‘Mice are gone,’ ” Bunny read out.

Dr. Battista made a strangled, gasping noise. He buckled in the middle and crumpled onto the pew in front of them.

To Kate, the word “mice” made no sense, for a moment. Mice? What did mice have to do with anything? She was waiting for news of her wedding. Uncle Theron seemed equally uncomprehending. He said, “Mice!” with a look of distaste.

“The mice in Father’s lab,” Bunny explained to him.

“His lab’s got mice?”

“It
has
mice.”

“Yes…” Uncle Theron said, clearly not seeing the distinction.

“Guinea-pig mice,” Bunny elaborated.

Now he looked thoroughly confused.

“I can’t take it in,” Dr. Battista was saying faintly. “I can’t seem to absorb this.”

Another swooping sound came from the phone. Bunny held it up and read out, “ ‘The animal-rights activists stole them the project is in ruins all is lost there is no hope.’ ”

Dr. Battista groaned.

“Ah, yes,
that
kind of mice,” Uncle Theron said, his forehead clearing.

“Does he mean the PETA people?” Bunny asked everyone. “Is there some rule that grown-ups aren’t allowed to abbreviate, or what? ‘PETA,’ you idiot! Just say ‘PETA,’ for God’s sake! ‘Animal-rights activists,’ ha! The guy is so…plodding! And notice how all at once he puts a ‘the’ every place he possibly can, even though he almost never says ‘the’ when he’s talking.”

“All those years and years of work,” Dr. Battista said. He was doubled over now with his head buried in his hands, so that it was hard to make his words out. “Those years and years and years, all down the drain.”

“Oh, dear, now surely it can’t be
that
bad,” Uncle Theron said. “I’m sure this is repairable.”

“We’ll just buy you some new mice!” Bunny chimed in. She handed the phone back to Kate.

Kate was beginning to grasp the situation finally. She told Bunny, “Even you ought to know that only those mice will do. They’re at the end of a long line of generations of mice; they were specially bred.”

“So?”

“How did these people get
into
the lab?” Dr. Battista wailed. “How did they know the combination? Oh, God, I’ll have to start over from scratch, and I’m too old to start from scratch. It would take me another twenty years at the very least. I’ll lose all my funding and I’ll have to close the lab and drive a taxi for a living.”

“Heaven
forbid
!” Uncle Theron said in real horror, and Bunny said, “You’re going to make me drop out of school and get a job, aren’t you. You’re going to make me go to work serving raw bloody sirloins in some steakhouse.”

Kate wondered why they were both contemplating careers they were so unsuited for. She said, “Stop it, you two. We don’t know for sure yet whether—”

“Oh, what do
you
care?” her father demanded, raising his head sharply. “You’re just glad, I bet, because now you don’t have to get married.”

Kate said, “I don’t?”

Her uncle said, “Why would she
have
to get married?”

“And you!” Dr. Battista told Bunny. “So what if you drop out of school? No great loss! You’ve never shown the least bit of aptitude.”

“Poppy!”

Kate was staring at the hymnal rack in front of her. She was trying to get her bearings. She seemed to be experiencing a kind of letdown.

“So that’s it,” her father said bleakly. “Excuse me, Theron, will you? I need to get down to my lab.” He stood up by inches, like a much older man, and stepped into the aisle. “Why should I even go on living anymore?” he asked Kate.