A Wedding on the Banks (24 page)

Banshee:
(Celtic mythology) a
female spirit believed to wail outside a house as a warning that a death will occur soon in the family.

—Collins American English Dictionary

Sunday morning found Pearl McKinnon Ivy staring out of her bedroom window with dark circles beneath her eyes. There had been voices again in the summer kitchen, lilting and ghostly. She had even nudged Marvin awake and asked him to listen.

“There's nothing,” he said, and rolled onto his side and was soon snoring. Pearl lay awake staring at the ceiling. There they were again, micelike and muffled: scampering noises and whispers, coming from the old summer kitchen. Marge, no doubt, rifling through the dusty trunk in search of her love letters of another era, of a golden time. How soon before she put two and two together, assuming ghosts could add, and came clawing at the back door for an explanation?

“I want my letters!” Pearl could hear the April wind whistling about the eaves. She would have to tell Sicily. Sicily would be in danger, too, as she was half responsible. And Pearl would not hesitate to let Marge's ghost know this tidbit. All night long she had lain awake to the tinny voices of those old lovers, Marge and Marcus Doyle. Were these voices in her head? Pearl shuddered to think that she was on the short road to another breakdown. But she had heard bees, dozens of them, during that first lapse with sanity, when Marvin decided to become an undertaker instead of a lawyer. Maybe the voices were divine. Look at Joan of Arc. She'd heard voices and she ended up burning at the stake for them. Pearl imagined herself tied to a pine tree while the good wives of Mattagash circled around her with cigarette lighters. But again, Joan of Arc was French, so God only knows what she was hearing. Extraterrestrials, maybe. And Pearl decided that if God had wanted to talk directly to
her
, he would have chosen the quiet streets of Portland, Maine, and not Mattagash. Yet Mattagash was where she wanted to be, if the supernatural world would just leave her alone.

“I'm home,” Pearl said. “Even if it is haunted.”

***

Sicily Lawler had spent a restless night with her own tortured dreams. She was sitting on the sofa in her brightly colored living room and thumbing through a scrapbook of her grandchildren, the offspring Amy Joy and Jean Claude were sure to bequeath to her in her old age.

“They were all frog-legged,” Sicily remembered. “Poor little tadpoles.” She closed her eyes, hoping the awful pictures would disappear.

Downstairs in her kitchen, Sicily was shocked to see a virginal layer of snow spread out over Mattagash. If that wasn't a sign from Providence to call off the wedding, what was? She heard Amy Joy stirring about in her bedroom, in the very room where she had grown and blossomed into womanhood. There were a few weeds poking out here and there, granted, but there had been a blossoming.

“I always thought this would be one of the happiest moments in my life,” Sicily thought, as she patted Puppy's head. Maybe Amy Joy would have met her Prince Charming right here in Mattagash. After all, the Kennedys came down the Mattagash River once. And so did Jane Wyatt, from
Father
Knows
Best
. All the actress wanted when she came ashore was a place to pee, and she had trudged up the riverbank to Norton Gifford's house. And Rita Gifford had led her to the indoor chamber pot and instructed poor Jane Wyatt to toss the little yellow tissues she had in her purse into the empty pail leaning against the door for such inconveniences. But maybe Jane Wyatt would have trudged up the hill at Sicily Lawler's house, and Sicily would have handed her a glass of lemonade, and Jane would say that she knew just the perfect young man for Amy Joy. A young man far, far away from Mattagash. Maybe even a movie star.

“I could be having lunch with a Mrs. Rockefeller or a Mrs. Kirk Douglas, those snazzy people who have more Rolls-Royces than they do children.” Sicily imagined several such cars, sleek and shiny, pulling up to Albert Pinkham's motel, the wedding entourage. Sicily would say clever things like “Charmed” when the Vanderbilts introduced themselves and she would even curtsy in respect. Yet here was Amy Joy marrying into a family of the French persuasion whom Sicily had not even met. And if Sicily curtsied to one of
them
, it would be so that she could gaze at them eye to eye.

She put on some water for tea. As the coiled burner grew red and the water began to pop into tiny bubbles, Sicily contemplated her fate. She missed Ed terribly on this morning of all mornings. If Ed had been alive these past ten years, Amy Joy would have progressed differently along life's highway. Right now, as far as Sicily was concerned, Amy Joy was in the ditch.

“She's left the road completely,” Sicily thought, as she stared out at the dazzling white. She would need to iron her dark blue suit, the one she wore to Dorrie Fennelson's wedding. She would not waste money on another dress for such a sad occasion as her own daughter's wedding. She
would
wear the bouquet that was sitting in her refrigerator. Amy Joy had bought it the evening before and now it was perched atop a dozen eggs, next to the orange juice, with its little green “IGA grocery item” sticker. Pearl had worn black when Junior married Thelma Parsons, but Sicily had always fought the psychological inward battle and left the outward ones to Pearl. She wasn't sure yet what it was, but on the snowy morning of her daughter's wedding, she knew something had to be done. Maybe she could fake a heart attack at the church. But no, Amy Joy had said she'd had it
up
to
there
with Sicily's organs. Maybe when the minister asked if anyone had any objections, Sicily could stand up and ask, “Where should I begin?” She had even thought of lacing Amy Joy's Pepsi with sleeping pills, hoping she'd sleep all the way past seven p.m. on the day of her wedding. But Sicily was afraid she might use too many pills. Amy Joy would stay sleeping forever and Sicily would go to jail for life. Although, compared to having Jean Claude as a son-in-law, Sicily
could
imagine herself knitting boxes of mittens, crocheting doilies, painting every paint-by-number picture in the state of Maine, and being perfectly happy. Except that she would miss Amy Joy, just as she would miss her after today. Twice during the night Sicily had left her own warm bed and tiptoed down the stairs to stand outside her daughter's bedroom door. Only when she heard the regular whistles of breath coming and going from Amy Joy's chest, like little trains, did Sicily find strength enough to go back to her room.

“This is her last night in my house as a child,” she thought. “At least as
my
child.” But twenty-four years old and still single in Mattagash meant it was time to get the lead out.

Sicily put a tea bag in her cup and splashed hot water on it. There were still several hours before the catastrophe. Maybe something unforeseen would happen. Maybe there would be an earthquake. Few people realized that the state of Maine had as many faults as other states, so to speak.

“Dear Jesus,” Sicily prayed. “Please do something.”

***

They had been at Albert Pinkham's establishment for only two nights and already he was at his wits' end as to whether he should toss them out again, or swallow his anger and pad the room bill. There had been a constant parade of Ivys to his door demanding everything from writing paper to postcards to an ice bucket. An ice bucket, for Chrissakes! And there was the Mattagash River bank piled to high heaven with cakes of ice so big they'd make your head spin!

“Here,” Albert had said, and offered Randy Ivy a plastic Tupperware bowl and an ice pick. “Now you go down through that little patch of trees to the river and you chisel off all the ice you'll need.”

“Balls!” Randy had looked through bleary eyes and told Albert. “You mean there's no ice in your fridge, man?”

“Does this look like an igloo?” Albert demanded, and slammed the door in the boy's face. Albert had never seen dogs pay so much attention to their genitals. No one in Mattagash acted as crazed as Randy Ivy, except maybe Bill Fennelson, and he had a good reason. His mumps had gone down on him. And there was something else. Albert was smelling funny smells coming from number 4. As if someone had poured gasoline on old socks, then set them on fire. He was keeping as close an eye as he could on the comings and goings in number 4. Lola Craft was one of the comings. A real strumpet, that one. What his mother would have called a fallen sister. And if Winnie Craft were to hear such talk, which was circulating the entire town of Mattagash, it would most definitely take the wind out of her uppity sails. Winnie Craft would be permanently beached with that kind of news.

A slight knock jarred Albert back to the troublesome present, and he peered through the curtains directly into Thelma's pale, peaked face. She had already been there
five
times that morning. Albert had blazed that number into his brain. Three times she had whined and lamented that there was no breakfast to be served her in the privacy of her room. Breakfast in her room!

“Are you a queen or something?” Albert had asked the confused woman before him. “No? Sorry. We only serve queens breakfast in bed.”

Once, she had come for postage stamps.

“This ain't the post office, Miss Ivy,” Albert had calmly explained. “You drive to St. Leonard on Monday and they'll sell you all the stamps your funeral parlor money can buy.” He didn't care if he insulted her. She was too dazed to notice anyway.

“Funeral
home
,” she had told him. “We are not a
parlor
. We don't give
massages
.”

“I'll give you a
slap
,” Albert thought, but said nothing. Now here she was again. Albert opened the door. He would never be able to vacuum and then make up the bed in number 2, the bridal suite, if these niggling sandwich eaters kept up their assault on his door.

“What is it now?” he asked.

“Do you have dry-cleaning service?” Thelma wondered.

***

Junior knocked on the door to the pink room and Monique Tessier answered.

“Well, if it isn't an old friend,” she said.

“What are you doing way up here?” He slipped into the room. He had no desire to run into Randy, next door, although he had not seen much of his son since they'd pulled into Mattagash. Randy had asked for a Bible and then retired to his room.

“It's a free world,” said Monique Tessier. “I guess I can go where I want.”

“The hell you can,” said Junior. “This isn't the world. This is Mattagash, Maine. You're looking for trouble.”

“You got any?” asked Monique, and slipped a cigarette from a new pack.

“This won't work, this little stunt,” said Junior. “Thelma already knows about you. The old man knows. I'll just tell them the truth. You followed me here against my will.”

“What will you tell them about this?” asked Monique, and slipped her sweater over her head and stood surrounded by pink walls, braless, brown from the sunlamp she had been lying beneath on her living room floor since December.

“Oh god!” said Junior and covered his eyes. He tried to think of something else, of his son Marvin Randall Ivy III, in the very next room, maybe reading Leviticus at that very moment.
And
the
man
that
committeth
adultery
shall
surely
be
put
to
death.
He could not forget them. Their images danced beneath his closed lids and would not go away. He could see yellow spots now, which swam into large brown nipples, and the nipples rose magnificently from mounds ripened beneath a sunlamp but genuine as hell.

“She's hypnotizing me with them,” Junior thought, and imagined them swinging on the end of a string before his face.
You
are
getting
sleepy…very sleepy.
He could smell her Chanel No. 5 perfume, a mixture of cigarette smoke and lipstick mingling on her breath, her breath warm in his ear. It was Neeky, these sights and sounds and smells.

“It's been such a long time, Junie,” she whispered, her hands on his belt undoing it, her fingers rubbing his chest and undoing his knitted hands, undoing his marriage.

“Junie,” Monique cooed.

“Please go away,” Junior whispered. “Please go back to Portland.”

“You don't want that now, do you?” Monique asked, and placed Junior's hands on her warm breasts. “You don't want to be stuck up here in the sticks all by yourself, do you?”

Junior gazed down into her violet eyes, lavender as flowers. “Elizabeth Taylor,” he thought. And he wondered if Randy might find a passage somewhere in his trusty Bible that would exempt a weak man from time to time, when faced with a pure-blooded Jezebel.

***

Randy Ivy paid no attention to the headboard next door as it bumped urgently into his wall with a calculated rhythm. He was too concerned with examining Lola Craft's navel for the hundredth time that day.

“It's fuckin' unreal,” Randy said to the girl, who lay on her back, eyes glued to the ceiling. She was unused to pot, had never even smelled it until opportunity crossed her path with Randy Ivy's own twisted trail. “It's like a little Grand Canyon right here on your stomach, with little people from Ohio and Kentucky crawling around the rim, takin' Polaroid shots. I'm talking eerie, man.”

“What about yours?” said Lola. “Let's look at yours for a while.” She tugged up Randy's T-shirt. “An outie!” she screamed.

“Yeah,” said Randy. “We're talking pyramids in Egypt now. We're talkin' fuckin' camels walkin' around mine.” Randy pulled off his jeans and then helped Lola off with her own. Lola was better than Leslie Boudreau. With Lola he was a city man. He was in charge.