Immediate Family (28 page)

“And if you had it to do all over again?” he said, his eyes searching her face.

Stevie recalled how nervous she’d been the one time she’d babysat for Ruth, but they’d both survived, neither the worse for wear. Her fears about marriage and motherhood had been equally misguided. It wasn’t some shiny prize that would become dulled and chipped with handling, she realized, but a nest you built a straw at a time.

She realized, too, that if she wanted a second chance with Ryan, she would have to be the one to stick her neck out this time. No more pussyfooting around; she had to go for the bold stroke. Struck by a sudden inspiration, she said, “Close your eyes.”

“What for?” He eyed her with faint mistrust.

“Just do it.”

After a moment’s hesitation he complied. “You’re not going to run out on me, are you?” he asked.

“You’re going to have to start trusting me sometime, so you might as well start now,” she said, as she began backing away. “Now keep them closed until I tell you to open them.”

“All right, but this better be good.”

“It will be, I promise,” she called back to him as she raced toward the tide line.

A short while later she yelled through cupped hands, “Okay. You can open them now!”

Ryan didn’t say anything at first; he just stared at the giant block letters traced in the wet sand along the tide line. “It’s not that creative, I know,” she said, as she walked back toward him, “but it was the best I could do on short notice.”

“Is this some kind of joke?” he asked when he’d found his voice.

“Nope. But you better act fast. The tide’s coming in.” As she spoke, the surf rushed in to wash away the bottom half of the letters that spelled out
MARRY ME
.

Ryan set down the bag he was holding and walked to meet her, putting his arms around her and pulling her in close so that the top of her head fit neatly under his chin. “The answer is yes,” he said in a strangely thick voice.

“That was quick,” she murmured, holding him tightly with her cheek pressed up against his chest. “You don’t want to at least think about it?”

He drew back with a grin. “I’m not as slow to make up my mind as some people I know.”

“I’m sorry it took so long, but I plan to spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”

“Does that mean kids?” he asked, eyeing her hopefully.

She swallowed hard. “That, too.”

“So you’re really serious about this?”

“I didn’t say we should get started right away, but yeah,” she said, thinking of how it had felt holding Ruth in her arms. “I’ve even become quite adept at changing diapers. Though I have to admit, that’s my least favorite part.”

He shook his head, looking both bewildered and bemused. “Honestly, Stevie, I never know what to make of you.”

She smiled mysteriously. “Give it another fifty years or so. Maybe both of us will have me figured out by then.”

Six months later

T
he Princeton chapel’s carillon bells could be heard tolling across the campus on the day of Jay and Franny’s wedding. It was the first week in October, and the clouds and rain of the week before had given way to clear skies and mild temperatures. Windows stood open in the ivied brick buildings, and students lolled on the lawn in front of Firestone Library, heads tipped back, luxuriating in this last, glorious gift of sunshine.

As Emerson and Stevie made their way up the chapel walk, dressed in identical pale green silk chiffon dresses tied with darker green sashes, Emerson thought back to her own student days. She remembered how nervous she’d been her freshman year walking into her dorm room for the first time, wondering what her roommate would be like, this girl from California with a boy’s name, and if it was possible to room with someone for an entire year without them guessing you were an impostor. But within minutes of meeting Stevie, she’d known she had nothing to fear, and by the time they’d finished unpacking they were fast friends. Stevie Light, true to her name, was like lightning in a bottle, energizing everyone she came into contact with and keeping Emerson perpetually on the go. All these years later, she was still struggling to keep up.

“Slow down, will you?” she panted. “If I trip and go into labor, Franny will never forgive you.” Franny was riding over in the limo with Jay’s parents and Ruth, so Emerson had taken her car, forgetting that it was a long walk from the parking area to the chapel.

“Sorry.” Stevie immediately slowed her pace, darting Emerson a sheepish look. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. Just a little out of breath.” Emerson paused to rest, a hand on her belly. Had she been this big with Ainsley? She was glad Franny had seen the wisdom of going with an empire-waisted bridesmaid dress; she’d already had to let hers out twice. As for the shoes, dyed to match her dress, she should have done the sensible thing and worn flats.

“I just hope I look as elegant as you when I’m that far along,” Stevie said.

Emerson stared at her, her mouth dropping open. “You’re not—”

“No, I’m not.” Stevie was quick to set her straight. “Ryan wanted for us to get started right away, but I told him I needed at least a year before I plunged into the deep end.”

Their wedding, on a secluded beach in Pacific Grove, had been as low-key and untraditional as Stevie herself, with only close friends and family in attendance. The bride had worn a simple gown fashioned of vintage Irish lace, the groom a Hawaiian shirt and white jeans. Both were barefoot. But the real showstopper was when Grant Tobin showed up, toting his guitar. He’d written a song especially for the occasion, which he’d played for Stevie and Ryan as they stood under a bower woven of twigs studded with seashells, the setting sun bathing them in a golden glow. His singing had been a little rusty, that of someone who’d been down roads few would ever travel, but somehow that made it all the more haunting. Emerson had glanced over at Stevie’s mother at one point and seen tears rolling down her cheeks. It must have seemed a kind of miracle to her that a casual encounter in her free-spirited youth had led to this moment: her beautiful daughter and the stranger who’d fathered her sharing this special occasion.

Now Emerson turned to Stevie with a smile. “You know what they say, ‘If you want God to laugh, make plans.’”

She, too, had planned to wait before having another child, at least until the dust had settled. But Mother Nature, it turned out, had other ideas. Soon after her elopement, Emerson’s doctor had informed her that the two periods she’d missed that she had thought were the result of all the stress she’d been under, with Reggie’s INS troubles and her mother’s death, were in fact what Marjorie would have referred to as “a little stranger on the way.” Reggie had been over the moon when she broke the news to him, and Ainsley was delighted by the prospect of a baby brother or sister. But it had taken Emerson a while longer to get used to the idea. Having another child had seemed like such a huge responsibility. Once the shock wore off, though, she’d relaxed. She hadn’t done so badly with Ainsley, so there was no reason to think she wouldn’t do all right with this one, too.

They resumed walking, at a slower pace. “Somehow I can’t quite picture Grant as a grandpa,” Stevie remarked.

“It would save on music lessons,” Emerson pointed out.

“You’re right about that. He’d have the kid playing the guitar before he could even talk,” Stevie said, with a laugh.

“How are he and your mom getting along, by the way? They seemed pretty chummy at the wedding.”

Stevie laughed at the suggestion in Emerson’s voice that there was something going on with them. “They’re just friends. They go to AA meetings together. Other than that, they don’t have much in common.”

“Except for you.”

A corner of Stevie’s mouth hooked up. “Yeah, well, there is that. Though Grant only takes my word for it that he was there the night I was conceived.”

Despite her facetious remark, Emerson knew that Stevie had grown close to her father in the short time they’d known each other. Maybe not as close as if she’d known him all her life, but she was sensible enough to accept that in life, as Emerson herself had learned, you simply took what you could get and made the most of it.

At the chapel, they entered the vestry through a side door. For Emerson, it was like coming home. The home she’d made for herself here at Princeton, with her friends, light years from the fractured one in which she’d grown up. Peeking through the doorway into the sanctuary, where the pews, fashioned out of oak originally intended for Civil War gun carriages, were already half filled, her gaze was drawn to the Great East Window over the chancel. It depicted the love of Christ, the six smaller ones on either side the Psalms of David and the great Christian epics—Dante’s
Commedia,
Malory’s
Le Morte d’Arthur,
Milton’s
Paradise Lost,
and Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress.
She was reminded of her own heritage, ancestors who included a pre–Revolutionary War hero and the secretary of state under James Madison—a Princetonian himself, memorialized in the Window of Law high up in the south clerestory. A heritage she could take pride in now that she was no longer held hostage by it.

She spied Reggie near the entrance with the other groomsmen: Franny’s cousin David from Israel, Stevie’s husband, and Jay’s friend Todd from work. Seeing her husband, tall and dignified in his dark suit and tie, a sprig of clematis in his lapel, Emerson felt her heart take flight. Six months into her first marriage she’d been chafing at the bit, but with Reggie it just kept getting better. If God was smiling now, she thought, it was because the accident she’d always been sure was just around the bend had turned out to be a happy one.

Briggs showed up just then with Ainsley, who looked like a little princess in her frilly dress and patent-leather shoes, her hair in curls. She’d spent the evening before rehearsing her role as flower girl, and had been so wound up Emerson had had a hard time getting her to sleep and an even harder time rousing her earlier this morning. Luckily Briggs, who’d driven down from the city the night before, was staying at their hotel, so he’d volunteered to bring her over.

Emerson greeted them both with hugs and gave Ainsley the basket of rose petals she’d be scattering over the length of white cloth on the runner. “I know you’ll do just great, sweetie,” she whispered in her daughter’s ear before dispatching them both to the pew in back where Ainsley would await her cue, and she resumed her own place in the vestry.

The tolling of the carillon bells had given way to a Bach cantata, played with enthusiasm by the organist in the choir loft, when she heard a rustling noise behind her and turned to see Franny stepping through the doorway, breathtaking in her fitted silk-taffeta gown that Emerson had helped her select, a bouquet of pink and white roses clutched in one hand. She was accompanied by Ruth, and Jay’s parents, Everett Gunderson in a dark suit and tie looking more at ease than Emerson had ever seen him—mainly due to Franny’s efforts, she suspected—and his wife, Yvonne, doing her best to keep the squirming toddler in her arms from crushing her corsage.

“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting,” Franny said.

“Like we could’ve started without you,” said Stevie.

“Look at you. You’re so beautiful.” Emerson dabbed at her eyes with the hankie she’d had the foresight to tuck into her sleeve. Franny’s gown suited her hourglass figure perfectly: cinched at the waist, with a sweetheart neckline that accentuated her full breasts. With her hair pinned up and her veil falling in soft folds about her face, she was a sight to behold.

“Thanks to you,” Franny said. “If you hadn’t gone with me, I’d still be at that bridal shop obsessing over what to wear.”

“Don’t forget, she’s had lots of practice,” Stevie teased.

“Which is more than I can say for you,” Emerson replied, with a laugh. “You had to be dragged kicking and screaming down the aisle.”

“I never want to have to go through
that
again,” Stevie pronounced with a mock shudder. “So I guess this means Ryan’s stuck with me.”

“I don’t see him complaining,” Franny said.

From the choir loft came the first soaring notes of Puccini’s “Chi il bel sogno di Doretta,” sung by Franny’s friend from work, Hannah Moreland, in her lovely soprano voice honed by amateur theatre productions. Emerson peeked into the sanctuary once more to find Jay standing at the altar with his best man, Todd Oster. The pews were mostly filled and the doors stood open, where moments from now the bride and her two bridesmaids would be making their entrance, preceded by Ainsley. Emerson, slipping an arm each through those of her two best friends, announced, “It’s show-time, girls.”

As the three women made their way back outside and along the path toward the front of the chapel, Stevie thought about the even longer journey it had taken to get where they were today. Take her own wedding, for instance. After all the drama leading up to it, she’d expected to be a nervous wreck, but instead, as she and Ryan had stood barefoot in the sand exchanging their vows, the sun setting over the ocean and the people she loved best looking on, she’d felt strangely at peace. Maybe it had something to do with Grant, knowing what it had taken for him to travel those few miles, more than her aunt Katherine’s flying in from Hong Kong for the occasion. She had sworn she wouldn’t cry—that was for dewy-eyed girls with hope chests who subscribed to
Bride’s
magazine—but when he’d played the song he’d written for the occasion, she’d almost lost it. Good thing she’d had the excuse of the sun being in her eyes to explain why they were watering.

Then it was over, everyone clapping and cheering and rushing up to congratulate them. Afterward, there had been a barbecue on the beach, and when night fell they’d built a big bonfire and toasted marshmallows for S’mores. At one point, Stevie had noticed Nancy and Grant slipping off together. A short while later she’d spotted them strolling along the shore, their figures silhouetted against the moonlit sea. Briefly she’d entertained the fantasy that they would fall in love and get married. But Nancy had laughed at the idea when Stevie suggested it later on. They were just fellow survivors who, in time she hoped, would be good friends, she’d said. There was no more likelihood of their falling in love than of the Fillmore Auditorium of yore rising from the ashes.

Now, as they climbed the chapel steps, Stevie leaned in to murmur encouragingly in Franny’s ear, “Trust me, you won’t know what hit you until it’s over.”

“Don’t listen to her. Enjoy every second of it,” Emerson advised from her end.

In lieu of a father or close male relative to give her away, Franny had broken with tradition and was having her bridesmaids do the honors. Stevie could feel her trembling as they started down the aisle following the crooked trail of rose petals Ainsley had strewn, and wanted to pat her hand and whisper once more that it was going to be okay. But Franny’s gaze was fixed firmly on Jay, at the altar, who even in his tuxedo looked as if he’d just hopped down off the back of a pickup, with his perpetually windblown hair and sun-kissed cheeks, and from the way Franny was beaming, it was clear she didn’t need any reassurance.

As Franny made her way up the aisle, arm in arm with Emerson and Stevie, she was scarcely aware of the people around her. Here and there, a familiar face would emerge from the blur on either side of the aisle—her aunt Sadie and uncle Moe who’d flown up from Fort Lauderdale; Stevie’s mom, Nancy; Jay’s mother, in regulation mother-of-the-groom crepe de chine, holding Ruth on her lap. Franny blew Ruth a kiss, but she only gaped at her in open-mouthed wonder, as if she didn’t recognize her.

Not for the first time, she wished her mother and brother could have been here. Esther might have grumbled a bit in the beginning about her marrying a goy, in a church no less, but the fact that it was Jay, whom she’d referred to as her Yiddisher son, convinced he’d been Jewish in another life, would have made it all right. And Bobby…well, he might have disrupted the proceedings somewhat with his odd behavior…but he, too, would’ve been happy for them.

She thought, too, of the last time she’d seen Jay standing at the altar in a tuxedo: when he was marrying Vivienne. Franny had been the maid of honor on that occasion. Now Vivienne was in Paris and the last she’d heard living with some Frenchman. And it was Franny walking down the aisle, dressed all in white, with a heart full of love and her mind as certain as it had ever been.

Then there was only Jay, his shining eyes the polestar keeping her on course. When she reached his side, he laced his fingers through hers, whispering, “You look amazing.”

The chaplain spoke briefly but eloquently about the sanctity of marriage and the challenges they would overcome together in the years ahead. When it was time for them to exchange vows, Jay pulled a folded sheet of paper from his vest pocket. Clearing his throat, he began to read aloud: “Franny, you’re my best friend and my soul mate. I didn’t always know you could have both in one woman, but I do now. I also know that if the rest of our lives is anything like it’s been up until now, we’re in for a real adventure.” He glanced up at her and they exchanged a smile, accompanied by a ripple of laughter from those who knew them best. “I can’t imagine life without you. You make me laugh. You’re always there when I need you. You keep me honest, and I know I’m a better man because of you. Best of all, you’ve given me our beautiful daughter. If I could have one more wish, it would be to spend the rest of my life with you at my side.”