Going to the Chapel (18 page)

“Oh, no,” I say. And, trust me, I’m not
that
good with bad news. Granted, with all my fumbling, I’m called upon to say enough difficult things, but practice doesn’t always make perfect. “I couldn’t.”

Cassie pats Elaine on the shoulder. “You’ll be able to do it yourself. You just need a good night’s sleep and you’ll do fine. We’ll help you think of what to say.”

Remembering how upset Aunt Ruth can get makes me think of something else. I turn to Elaine. “Does your mom know you’re going to spend the night here?”

“I left a note.”

“I wish we had more sleeping space,” Cassie adds. She’s looking around with her hostess expression as though she’s expecting to see another room spring into being. It doesn’t happen. “There’s really only the floor left.”

I tell myself I need to give Cassie a larger percent of the rent now that all of my relatives have decided to come and stay with us. Cassie may be closer to me than my half family, but there are limits and I think we’ve reached them.

Doug helps Jerry carry in the ficus plants from the pickup and then he leaves.

“He’s okay,” Jerry says after Doug leaves. “You wouldn’t know he got dunked.”

“He didn’t get baptized, he made a commitment,” I say.

I look at Jerry’s grinning face and I wonder why I bother.

“I knew you know stuff like that. I’m still waiting for John 3:16,” he says.

I give him a look as I take the seat cushions off the sofa. “Here, you can strap these together to make a pillow bed for Elaine.”

Elaine drapes her bagged wedding dress over the table. I can see the pattern of the lace through the plastic at the bottom and I wonder how such a dress could inspire so many tears.

“I think I’m too upset to sleep,” Elaine says.

I still have the air mattress. Cassie has the bed. And Jerry has the Hide-A-Bed in the living room

“It’ll all work out,” I say, even though I know it might not.

Cassie and I would usually talk a few minutes as we got ready for bed, but Elaine is here and I’m afraid if we all start talking that she’ll start crying and we’ll be up all night. I do manage to ask Cassie if she had a good time at dinner and she smiles so I’m assuming
that’s a good report. She asks if I had a good dinner with Doug and I can’t think of a code for the jumble of feelings that question brings up so I just shrug. I’ll tell her more about it tomorrow.

The lights are all off and I’m looking at the outline of the window in Cassie’s bedroom. Earlier, I put the air mattress in front of it so I could look out and see the stars. Of course, there’s so much street light that I don’t see any. Still, I think of Joey and his gold stars.

Then I hear a sniffle. Then another one.

“Elaine?” I ask a little reluctantly.

I hear a full-blown sob now from the direction of Elaine’s pillow bed. “I can’t get married without any of my family there.”

“A wedding is just a day. It’s the marriage that counts,” I say. “Your family will be part of that.”

For a moment, there’s silence again and I think I’ve made my point.

“I still don’t think it’s right that Gary’s mom is taking over the wedding. She’s not my mom,” Elaine says.

“What does Gary say?”

“He’s busy studying. He’s got some papers to finish before the wedding.”

I get an uneasy feeling. “Elaine, when was the last time you saw Gary?”

Elaine gives a subdued sob. “The party.”

“The engagement party?” I ask. “That’s almost two weeks ago!”

“He’s been studying for our future,” Elaine says indignantly. “When you marry a doctor, you have to expect things like this.”

“He’s a dentist,” I say.

“I know.” Elaine begins to wail in earnest. “But he’s almost a doctor.”

“Well, I’m sure he’d want you to get some sleep,” I say. “So try not to worry about things. We’ll figure out what to do in the morning.”

Okay, so now I can’t sleep wondering about what kind of a man Elaine is marrying. Isn’t it just a little abnormal for a woman’s fiancé to not see her while the wedding plans are on? Especially when his mother seems so involved? I mean, it’s only a two-hour drive for him to get to Aunt Ruth’s house. Even if his parents are staying with him, surely there would be a Sunday afternoon when he could go say hi to Elaine even if he had to take his parents with him. I don’t have the heart to ask Elaine if she’s talked to Gary on the phone since the engagement party.

I know everyone loves in their own way, but Gary seems as if he loves Elaine from the opposite side of the world. Either that or he’s afraid of his own mother and is letting Elaine take the brunt of his mother’s opinions, none of which are probably easy to live with. I don’t think much of that kind of love. A man should stand with his bride not with his mother, at least some of the time. But then, I don’t know a lot about love.

I think of Jerry trying to get me to recite the “For God so loved the world” verse. He thinks I don’t know the verse, but I do. I remembered so many of them tonight talking to Doug. I can’t help but think that Elaine would be better off relying on God’s love instead of this Gary’s love.

Elaine could do worse than to look to her Bible. Of course, she won’t hear that opinion from me. I’m neutral in this one, too.

I
had no idea it would be so hard to fix breakfast with three ficus trees crowding my back and a good-sized begonia sitting on top of the refrigerator next to me.

“I think they’re too large to move out to the fire escape,” Cassie says as she frowns at the plants. “I didn’t think of that.”

Cassie is wearing an aqua-blue sweatshirt this morning.

“I can move them up against this wall,” Jerry says as he yawns. He’s wearing a different brown T-shirt this morning. Apparently, man of fashion that he is, he has two. He’s already straightened up his blankets and is pushing the mattress part of the Hide-A-Bed back under so we can all sit on the sofa. Cassie and Elaine go over and sit there now. They both look tired and the day has just begun.

Cassie looks around and says a little numbly, “I’ll have to think about what to do with the plants, I guess.”

Neither Cassie nor I got any sleep last night. When
Elaine wasn’t crying, she was talking in her sleep. She wasn’t saying anything we could make out, but there was a lot of whimpering. The funny thing is that I started to have more compassion for Elaine as the night wore on and not less. In all her fussing, she was just a little girl who wanted somebody to rescue her. I can relate; I used to feel the same way.

“I’m going to tell Gary’s mother I won’t do the cruise,” Elaine announces for the tenth time this morning. She’s got some frilly ivory blouse thing happening today and her makeup is within the lines so I guess she’s better. When I first glimpsed the lace it reminded me of the wedding dress, which has been moved to Cassie’s bed so we can use the table for the breakfast of cooked oatmeal that I am fixing everyone. It’s Thursday and I think we might need some fortification to cope with the rest of the week. Oatmeal should be good for that.

“Just because you’re afraid to tell your mom about the cruise, that’s no reason to refuse the cruise completely,” I say. “Maybe you can negotiate with Gary’s mom.”

“Me?” Elaine says and looks around her. Her eye stops at Jerry.

“Don’t look at me. I have some measuring to do for Aunt Ruth,” Jerry says. He’s not looking at Elaine when he answers her, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “Cruise or no cruise, Aunt Ruth gave me her orders.”

“Speaking of Aunt Ruth—” I forget about Jerry and try to catch Elaine’s eye “—shouldn’t you call your mother? I’m sure she’ll be worried about you.”

“She knows where I am,” Elaine says with a stubborn lift of her chin. “If she wants to see me, she can come here.”

Okay, well, that’s not a good plan for oh so many reasons.

I look to Cassie for help.

Cassie turns to Elaine. “Don’t you need to be back in Blythe yourself to keep making plans for the wedding?”

“Why bother? Everything is falling apart,” Elaine says and I see tears starting to form in her eyes.

I’m not sure any of us can take more crying. Besides, it will make her mascara run again. I rush in with a question of my own. “Don’t you have some sort of a bachelorette party coming up with your bridesmaids? That should be fun.”

“I don’t have any bridesmaids left.” Elaine begins to wail.

Okay, so much for her feeling better. Cassie starts to walk toward the box of tissues she keeps beside the sofa, but then she turns and brings back a towel from the bathroom. She hands it to Elaine without her usual pat on the shoulder.

“I thought you had all the bridesmaids lined up,” I say. “Aunt Inga said you asked the Bowman twins and Allison Murry.”

All three of these girls are from Blythe and Elaine has known them all her life. Well, Cassie and I knew them, too. And Jerry. There were no strangers in school when we were growing up in Blythe. The twins and Allison always seemed as empty-headed as Elaine and I was never comfortable around them. Not that I was a rocket scientist. I just couldn’t stand to talk about clothes and boys all day. Okay, so maybe it was because I didn’t have much to talk about in either of
those categories. Still, those conversations used to give me headaches like the one I’m getting now.

“They all quit,” says Elaine. Her mascara is starting to run and I’m wondering what kind she uses. Probably something organic. I didn’t think they made any mascara that ran like that anymore.

“All three of them quit?”

“Well—” Elaine stops to take a breath “—Gary’s sister is still going to be in the wedding.”

Gary’s sister lives in Boston and she didn’t come to the engagement party so I’m sure she’s not planning to come to any bachelorette party.

“I can’t believe the others would bail on you like that,” Cassie says. “Just because it’s not going to be a fancy wedding in Palm Springs, that’s no reason for them to pull out.”

Aunt Ruth isn’t the only one in Blythe who thinks Palm Springs is as close to Mecca as any of us can ever hope to get. When we were in high school, it was the place to go if you wanted to have a serious date. Even now, the expensive weddings take place there.

Jerry grunts as if he’s heard this all before. “They’re not backing out because of Palm Springs. It’s those orange dresses. They finally had sense enough to try them on in front of some mirrors. Everyone says they look like pumpkins. The maid of honor is the only one who is wearing brown.”

Elaine sniffles. “Allison said she refuses to walk down the aisle looking like some vegetable out of the produce section.”

“I don’t think pumpkin is a vegetable,” Cassie says.

“The orange is not pumpkin anyway,” Elaine says
as she dabs at her eyes. “The store says it’s their Fall Sunset color. Sunsets are beautiful.” Elaine takes a breath, but can’t manage to hold in her feelings. “My wedding is ruined.”

I hate to bring up the obvious, but I guess it’s time. “If you have a cruise wedding, you won’t need the bridesmaids anyway. And, if you did have bridesmaids, who wouldn’t go? I mean it’s a cruise.”

Even though I am turned away from everyone now because I’m momentarily adding raisins to the oatmeal, I become aware that the silence behind my back is going on a little long after my speech so I turn around. Elaine is looking at me with a calculating look in her eyes.

“You and Cassie could be my bridesmaids,” Elaine says in a rush when she sees I’m looking at her. “I don’t think there would be any money involved, but I’m sure Mom would pay for the cruise—”

“Of course, there wouldn’t be any money involved,” Cassie says indignantly. “No one accepts money to be a bridesmaid. It should be an honor. Of course, there’s no more room on the cruise, remember?”

I hope Elaine doesn’t interpret Cassie’s response about it being an honor as a yes.

I turn back to the stove and lift the pan of oatmeal off the burner. “Regardless of where you get married, if you still have that same color, we’re in trouble. I thought you said it wouldn’t go with my hair.”

I know it’s too late to get new bridesmaid dresses of any color so the orange pumpkins are it.

“You can put a darkening mousse in your hair for the day,” Elaine says.

“I like my hair—I’m not going to hide its color,” I say as I set the pan of oatmeal on a trivet in the middle of the table.

“Of course, nobody in my family will know my wedding is ruined because they won’t be there,” Elaine says.

“I can’t believe Gary’s mother isn’t open to compromise about who is going. Besides, your parents can certainly afford to pay for their own cabin. Maybe Gary’s mother just meant they were only going to pay for their side of the family to go. That makes sense.”

“Nothing makes sense,” Elaine says as she stands up and walks toward Cassie’s bedroom.

“It’ll be okay,” Cassie says.

“How would you feel if this was your wedding?” Elaine asks as she opens the door and stands in the doorway. “It’s supposed to be the most wonderful day of my life and it’s turning out awful.”

Now that Elaine has stopped crying, none of us know what to say to her so we are silent as she closes the door. Part of me thinks she’s right. She’s going to have a hard time keeping all of the parents happy on this one.

There aren’t many gray mornings in Hollywood, but this is one of them and the gloom comes through the window and settles on the three of us as we sit at the table. Jerry has taken the plants off the wooden box that serves as a coffee table and has upended it to make himself a stool so he can sit at the table with Cassie and me.

“You need a couple of folding chairs,” Jerry says. “I’ll keep my eyes open for some used ones.”

Cassie nods, but gives a worried look toward the closed bedroom door.

“She just needs some time alone,” I say quietly. I’m not sure that’s true, but the rest of us need some quiet time without her. We eat our oatmeal with raisins in peace for a minute.

“She’s going to have to tell Aunt Ruth pretty soon,” Jerry says.

I nod. I always thought people in our family were trying to spare each other’s feelings, but now I’m seeing that all this sidestepping of the truth has only stopped us from being close. Elaine should be sharing her troubles with Aunt Ruth. It might make them closer. I know I feel a lot closer to Jerry now that there are fewer secrets between us.

I think I’m becoming warped. Somehow the me I always knew isn’t the me I am these days. I think it’s because of those Bible verses from my childhood that have come back to haunt me. I have started to wonder what my relationships would be like now if I had become a Christian back then in Sunday school. I’m not wondering what my life would be like, because it might be close to the same as it is now. At least the unattached, rolling-around part.

But I might be closer to people, especially the cousins and the aunts. Maybe I would even have been able to be on Elaine’s side sometimes growing up instead of always picking the opposite side just to show that I was my own person. Maybe even if she kept calling me her half cousin, I could just have accepted her as family. If I had done that, maybe there would have been no reason for her to keep calling me a half cousin. Forgiveness and truth should be the backbone of any family, even a mismatched one like ours.

I think it might be because of lack of sleep, but I decide right then and there that, if I’m hoping everyone in the family will be more truthful, I need to do my part.

“I’m going to tell Aunt Ruth about the Big M,” I announce.

“What?” Cassie says.

“Are you nuts?” Jerry, always the diplomat, adds.

“What’s the Big M?” Elaine asks from the doorway of the bedroom. She’s combed her hair and stopped crying.

Well, this isn’t quite how I’d pictured it, I think to myself. I hadn’t meant to tell Elaine. I mean Elaine is stressed out enough over the wedding; she doesn’t need to know that the chapel that is the backup place for her wedding is a mortuary.

There’s a minute of shuffling silence.

“It’s a new kind of milk Julie found,” Cassie finally says. “You know, the Big M. Big Milk. Lots of vitamins. She’s planning to buy some at the store later.”

“Good,” Elaine says with a shrug. “You can’t get too many vitamins.”

“Nope, you can’t get too many vitamins,” I agree.

There is another minute of silence as Elaine walks over to the sofa and sits down.

“Oh, here,” Jerry says as he stands up from his stool with his empty bowl in his hand. “Sit here and have some oatmeal. There are lots of vitamins in that. It even has raisins.”

I think to myself that Jerry has been using manners he probably didn’t even know he had. He doesn’t seem
to be minding it, though, so I have reason to hope that he’s turning into a thoughtful kind of a guy.

Elaine has barely sat down at the table when my cell phone rings. My purse is beside the sofa so I walk over to it and pull out my cell phone. I think it might be Doug, but I see from my number display that it is Aunt Ruth.

“Oh.” I pick the phone up without answering it and walk it over to Elaine. “Sorry, but this is your mother. I’m sure she wants to talk to you.”

Okay, so I know that is the cowardly thing to do. I do plan to tell Aunt Ruth about the Big M soon, but I don’t want to do it at seven-thirty in the morning with Elaine listening. No one, at least in our family, is at their best before midmorning.

Elaine talks on the phone for about ten seconds and then holds out the phone to me. “It’s really Aunt Inga. She’s just calling from my mom’s place.”

“Oh,” I say as I reach for the phone. “Hi, Aunt Inga.”

“Oh, Julie,” Aunt Inga says with her voice gushing loud enough I wonder if everyone in the room can hear her. I look at Cassie and can tell from the smile on her face that she hears the gush. “I couldn’t wait to talk to you.”

“Did you call about Elaine? She’s still a little upset, but she’s doing fine.”

“Well, of course, she’s doing fine,” Aunt Inga says. “It’s a wonderful day.”

Even for Aunt Inga this is a little happy for this early in the morning. “Have you had breakfast? Maybe a little protein would—”

“I called your mother,” Aunt Inga announces, which stops me in midworry.

“What?”

“I called your mother in Las Vegas,” Aunt Inga says proudly. “I remembered how she could always make a room look pretty. I thought maybe she’d help us decorate the chapel.”

I blink and look over at Cassie. She looks as shocked as I feel.

“You asked my mother to help?” I finally manage to say. “What did Aunt Ruth say?”

“Your aunt Ruth is lying down with a wet towel on her forehead. The hotel with the golf course told her they had no openings for the wedding. They even refused to give her golf lessons.”

“Oh. But there might be another hotel they can use,” I say.

“Your mother was so excited that I asked for her help,” Aunt Inga continues just as though I hadn’t hinted that we need to keep looking. “It will be a real family affair. I even told her all about the place where you work and how your boss is letting us use it for Elaine’s wedding so he must think the world of you.”

“Oh, well, he just—”

“Once your mother is done with that chapel of yours, it will look ten times better than the church in Palm Springs.” Aunt Inga rushes to the end. “Isn’t that wonderful? It’s been a long time since the whole family worked together on something.”