Aftermath of Dreaming (26 page)

 

I am driving in my truck with Suzanne's veil pinned to a hanger that is suspended from the clothes hook in front of the passenger window. It's like riding with the ghost of all brides, but a benevolent one, a sort of phantom fairy godmother. I am wearing my maid-of-honor dress. I considered doing the normal thing and wearing something else to the church, then changing there, and I know I will hear a chorus from the bridesmaids: “You didn't wear something comfortable before you have to change into that!” and “Aren't you afraid you'll ruin it before the pictures and ceremony!” But considering that the dress trails around
me like an unused parachute and is a jumbled profusion of floral madness, nothing could be more comfortable or less able to show wrinkles or spots. For the first time, I commend my sister's choice, though I suspect Michael might be shocked when he sees me since I wear only solid colors and form-fitting clothes. But that's assuming he'll notice.

It takes three rings of his doorbell before I hear footsteps approach. I know Michael is home because his BMW is parked out front, its great-on-the-outside/a-total-mess-within appearance on full view in the day's bright sunlight.

Finally Michael opens the front door. All he is wearing is cutoff jeans, an unshaved beard, and a peculiar grin on his face. Groovy music that sounds like it was recorded outside is playing inside. He takes a long step backward without saying anything, and as I follow him into the living room's dim light, I see Ivan, a blond dreadlocked deejay from the station, sprawled on the couch. Ivan appears peculiarly specifically cheerful, as well.

“What are y'all—” But my words are suddenly interrupted by Michael's hand touching my mouth.

“The most perfect flower,” he says, staring at me. “Your dress and lips and mouth and dress.” His fingers are tracing my lips, at first soft, then hard, then gentle, but all annoying, and Ivan is now staring to boot.

“That is so sweet,” I say as I try to bat his hand away. “But, um, Michael, shouldn't you be getting ready now?”

Michael's hand is on overdrive. It is grabbing my lips, which can be pulled out much farther than I thought they could, then his hand starts contorting and shaping them with his strong fingers.

“Bloom and die and bloom and die,” he chants like the underlying theme of a nursery rhyme.

My attempt to ask what the hell he is doing comes out in gibberish thanks to his hand still having its way with my lips. As I manage to pry his fingers loose, Michael immediately trains his detail-obsessed attention onto my dress, and the general grooviness of his behavior and the scene finally sinks in.

“Oh, God, no. Michael, are you tripping on the day of my sister's
wedding?” He is now trying to pick the flowers off my dress, grabbing at the fabric—and ergo, my legs—relentlessly. “Yes, you are. Okay, can I just die now please?”

Michael's face crumples like a punctured balloon. “No, we're going to the Phish concert today.”

“Yeah, clearly—you're in great shape for that.”

“Wow,” he says, eyes blinking hard and fast. “Okay, I really can't handle your dress right now.” Michael sits down on the couch and covers his face with his hands.

“Hey, man, don't harsh out his trip.” Ivan has moved his feet to the coffee table, and is lying stretched out.

“Oh, no, God forbid I harsh out the Phishing trip.”

Michael is now playing some pseudo peekaboo game with himself, his hands flapping open and shut rhythmically over his face.

“Hey, man, seeing as how you're vertical,” Ivan says. “Could you hand me the nose-blowing paper?”

“The what?” I suddenly wonder if this is some newfangled acid. And I thought stamps were all kids had to worry about.

“The nose-blowing paper, man.” Ivan sounds agitated, and is pointing at a box of tissues, his finger jabbing the air. “I got to blow my nose.”

My dress billows around me, a storm of flowers raining in the air, as I pick up the desired object and hand it to him. “Here. Blow away.”

 

A long expanse of white net floats by, then is stopped like a sail catching the wind as Betsy and I place the veil on Suzanne. The three of us stare at the nuptial angel reflected in the full-length mirror of the church's dressing room.

“It's breathtaking,” Betsy sighs.

“It's Momma's!” Suzanne ecstatically cries.

“Well, I figured it would definitely match with the prayer book and the music and all.”

Betsy squeals with delight.

 

God is happy with this home. The cathedral my sister is getting married in is gold and ornate, but tasteful in its excess. Baroque music is playing at full steam, filling the air like a teapot about to explode. I am standing at the altar waiting for Suzanne-the-bride to come forth. Six bridesmaids are in a line at my right with Mandy closest to me. Even in her conservative bridesmaid dress, she manages to look like she just posed for a
Cosmo
cover, like some Freudian reminder of what this ceremony is really about.

There is a pause of silence, a crash of chords, then three hundred congregants rise as the wedding march begins and Suzanne effulgently floats down the aisle. Tears immediately start streaming down my face, keeping pace with her steps. My sister is stunningly beautiful as immense joy exudes from her, blinding each row as she walks by.

 

As I sit in the front pew between Betsy and Mandy during the nuptial mass, my small but audible sobs accompany the vocalist who is glorifying the cathedral with “Ave Maria.” The almost-married couple is kneeling at the altar while music swirls around them like fairy dust gracing their union. Betsy looks completely blissed out, not unlike Michael before I harshed out his trip. Without removing her eyes from the bride, she reaches into her voluminous bag and puts a box of tissues on my lap. I blow my nose under cover of “Ave Maria's” final crescendo.

 

At the reception afterward, I decide the cathedral won the contest for most ornate, but it was close. The hotel ballroom is decorated like a Renaissance court, with two gigantic food-laden tables lining the walls and round white-covered tables festooned with pale soft flowers spread throughout around the dance floor and band.

Guests are making their way through the receiving line, which is missing its customary first greeter, the mother of the bride. I suddenly imagine a spotlight to commemorate her empty spot at the beginning of
the line. The place where our father should have stood, between Matt's mother and the bridal couple, is also vacant and therefore closed up, their bodies moved together to where he should stand, as if he never registered in Suzanne's existence. I am next to Suzanne, commencing the attendant portion of the line. Tears are still flowing down my face—they haven't stopped since they started the minute Suzanne walked down the aisle—but I am resigned to them now, like some really bad lipstick I've been forced to wear. I'm not even sure what they are from—happiness, sadness, both at once. Or maybe they are special tears from a reservoir that is marked just for nuptial events—tears to accompany a cacophony of emotion, too loud and jumbled and filled up to be quickly understood. If the guests I am greeting notice my quiet crying, they don't seem to care, or at least no one mentions it, like my neighbors and my screaming at night.

My voice and Suzanne's overlap, singing a roundelay with each other, the repeated phrases and similar angled nods of our heads becoming a sibling social duet.

Suzanne's refrain is, “Thank you so much. Well, simple is what we wanted because it's all about who's here, but once you see the possibilities…”

My chorus is a constant underscore of “Hi, so nice to meet you. I'm Yvette, Suzanne's sister. Yes, there is a resemblance. Thank you for being here. Hi, so nice…”

 

A divine intervention must have occurred because my weeping has finally stopped. The band is playing Frank Sinatra covers; the food tables have been ravished, and everyone is dancing. Even people who look like they have not danced in years are caught up in the wedding-love mood. I alone am sitting at one of the round tables, daydreaming about the nice long sleep I could have on the carpet. The child bridal couple darts past, playing hide-and-seek among the empty chairs. Her white lace dress is in tatters, his clip-on bow tie attached to the edge of her sleeve. I suddenly imagine Michael chasing me as persistently as this little groom with his play bride, but that's really a dream.

“Fly me to the moon, and let me sleep among the stars…” I like this version I am singing to myself better, a wedding lullaby for the romantically impaired and sleep deprived.

Just as my eyes are starting to nod shut, Suzanne materializes before me, her white silhouette blocking out all other stimuli, like a vision in a dream.

“There you are,” she says. I look around at the other empty tables and chairs surrounding the full dance floor, wondering how she possibly could not have seen me. “Where's Michael? Didn't he come?”

It feels like weeks since this afternoon when Michael stood me up or rather grooved out on me, and I had forgotten that my sister doesn't know he never arrived. “No, he went on an unexpected trip.”

“Oh, honey, that's too bad. Well, I need you to help me change.”

“I mastered that skill at three; haven't you gotten it yet?”

The band has switched to “We Are Family,” and the roiling throng is responding with whoops and flailing arms.

“Come on, I need to put on my traveling suit before everyone leaves.”

“For what? You and Matt are staying here tonight until your plane leaves tomorrow morning—why are you changing out of your dress?”

“Will you just come help me? God, you are so stubborn sometimes.”

Following my sister out the reception hall, I concede that she has a point.

 

The honeymoon suite where Suzanne and Matt will first slumber as husband and wife is a luxurious peach dream. My sister's empty wedding dress is lying in the middle of the floor like a circus tent dropped at the end, no longer needed to create magic in. I am zipping up Suzanne's cream-colored sheath as she holds her hair out of the way.

“And no one does receiving lines anymore, either, but my God, if I don't get to enjoy all the traditions and costumes that come with a wedding, what's the point.” She slips into the matching jacket and examines the result in the mirror.

“Well, I've always considered elevators travel.”

Suzanne catches my eye and we laugh ourselves into giggles. I suddenly want to put on our childhood matching nightgowns and play princesses in the backyard among the glowing fireflies that we pretended were fairies until long after dark.

I smooth down the collar of her jacket, letting her hair fall back onto her shoulders. “You look great.”

“Thanks.”

“I'm really happy for you.”

“Thanks, honey.”

Suzanne turns around and goes to the dresser, then begins rooting around in our grandmother's burgundy leather traveling valise that she uses as a jewelry case, pulling out pearl studs and a necklace.

“So, how long is y'all's honeymoon again? Bali's going to be great.”

Suzanne walks back over to me, holding something in her hand.

“This is yours,” she says, and places into my hand our mother's prayer book. The ivory leather is cool and soft on my skin like Momma's cheek was when I'd kiss her good night as a child. “I could tell she wanted you to have it when I asked her for it.”

“Oh, Suzanne, I can't.”

“Yes, I want you to have it. Now it's from both of us.”

A splash of wetness falls from my eye onto the book. I worry what the moisture will do to the leather, but realize mine are not the first tears to be caught and absorbed by the prayers held inside.

“Okay, but…” My words are interrupted by more tears emerging from my throat, lungs, and heart. They are fresh and solid, as if they are the first of their kind, not the thousandth that day, but I know that these are from a different place than the others. “I may not be able to use it for what y'all did.”

“Hush. You don't know that.” Suzanne puts her arms around me and hugs me in a true embrace as my dress gathers in folds between the clinch of our bodies. I feel my sister's arms around me and, through them, every member of our family reaching forward and back through our line.

“So I guess your migration into Matt's family is complete now.”

Suzanne pulls back and looks at me. “Is that what you think? Honey, there is family and there's family, but—”

I look into my sister's eyes, eyes the color of Momma's green one while my eyes are the color of Momma's brown one. We are one piece of tourmaline, two colors in the same gem, but split and refracting the light differently.

“You're my only sister. Nothing changes that.”

I hug her again, drinking in the safety of our relationship.

“There you two are.” Matt's voice enters the room before I see him. “There's a big crowd of people downstairs holding bags of birdseed and staring at me. I feel like I stumbled into the
The Lottery.
”

“It's confetti, honey, Betsy doesn't allow—”

“I don't care what it is; are you gonna do this with me?”

Suzanne turns to me one last time. “I'm ready, aren't I?”

“Yeah, you are.”

“Come on,” my brother-in-law says to me. “You're part of this, too.”

 

Monday morning at 7:02 is not a tranquil time at a radio station. Everything here seems extremely, extremely urgent, so maybe the outgoing message on Michael's cell phone isn't out of line after all.

“What time do you think he'll be done?”

Michael's assistant is like a Doberman pinscher, but one who is perky, blond, and able to look great at this ungodly hour. I, on the other hand, have barely slept. The eleven hours I slept after Matt and Suzanne's wedding brought me straight into Sunday afternoon, and either my sleeping schedule was so screwed up from that or it was the deciding/knowing what I need to do about Michael that kept me up all last night. Whichever it was, I gave in at six
A.M.
Got out of bed—at least no scream dreams happen on nights without sleep—made coffee, got dressed, jumped in my truck, and now here I am. And Michael was right—the freeway traffic was a bitch.