Nobody Cries at Bingo (16 page)

“Hi!” I said brightly (I had been aiming for cool). “Do you know where a party is?”

Before the driver could reply, the voice of God rang out from my grandpa's porch. And he sounded exactly like my Aunt Beth. Normally, she was my sweetest and gentlest aunt, except it seemed, when her sixteen-year-old niece was leaning into a car full of strange boys.

“Dawn, get your ass over here!” she yelled. I was still young enough that an adult's voice had power over me. I immediately backed away from the car. My uncle stepped out onto the porch next to my aunt. For the past four days they had hosted a bachelor party. (Yes, a four-day bachelor party.) They had bought beer and hard stuff and even a Texas mickey. They had driven to town to pick up more booze and snacks. They had helped write naughty words on the faces of my cousins when they passed out and had taken pictures of the bachelor party guests in embarrassing positions with goats and other livestock. All of that was over. Now their faces wore the looks of people who had never partied and never would again.

The driver rolled up his window and turned his car around. The other cars followed him out of the yard. I still remember the look of their lights as they all turned in the same direction, away from me.

“Good night Dawn!” my aunt called gleefully from the front steps as she walked back inside the house. Her cockblocking efforts had put an extra bounce in her step.

Minutes later Jolene and I trudged back to my house down the same path, the smell of spring rising up into the air as we crunched the grass and gravel under our feet. I silently cursed my bad luck. Jolene sipped a beer she had procured from one of her stashes.

The next day Tabitha and her new husband came by the house for brunch. My brother-in-law teased my siblings and me with newfound confidence; God had officially sanctioned his obnoxiousness. Tabitha sat beside me on the couch as she drank her coffee and I worked my way through a stack of pancakes. “Did you have a good time at the wedding?” she asked.

“Yeah, it was fun. I didn't meet any cute guys through.”

She smiled with the confidence that comes from wearing a gold ring. “Don't be in such a hurry. Everything comes in time.”

Mom's Wedding

In the picture, Mom's wedding gown ballooned around her as she clasped her bouquet to her waist.

“Wow, you look so chubby,” I said.

“Cuz I'm inside her belly, right Mom?” Celeste asked.

“Yup. Five months, pregnant.” Mom added, “I had the worst case of hemorrhoids.”

Behind Mom stood three bridesmaids. All of them wore excited smiles as if to say, “I can't believe we're getting away with this.” Mom touched her own photo, smoothing out the corners. “I can't believe I ever looked that young.”

A new question occurred to me. “Hey, when did you and Dad meet anyway?”

“I knew him from school and we had dated this one time when we were teenagers. I broke up with him because I thought he drank too much. I was much smarter back then.” She got up to refill her coffee cup.

“Then what happened?” Celeste asked. “Did he stop drinking for you?”

“I moved to the city and then after a couple of years, I came back and started working at the band office.”

“And Dad was chief!” Celeste and I said in unison.

“He was the band administrator then.”

“Was he like really cute and you were like all weird around him, like you couldn't even breathe right when he walked into the room?” I asked.

“He was okay,” Mom answered as she stirred sugar and cream into her coffee. “I was too busy looking after your older sister. I wasn't thinking about dating anyone.”

“He asked you out on a date?”

“I was living with grandpa and grandma so he came over and asked grandpa if he could go out with me.”

“See, now that's romantic!” I crowed.

“I guess so.”

“Where'd you go on the first date?” Celeste asked. “Somewhere fancy in the city like Red Lobster?”

We had never been to Red Lobster because Mom always said it was too expensive.

“As if. There wasn't even Red Lobsters back then,” I told Celeste.

“I'm not a dinosaur,” Mom said dryly.

“So there
were
Red Lobsters?”

“Well, no there weren't. That's not important cuz we didn't go to the city, we went down to the valley. To the old pizza place. I wasn't used to going out so I got really drunk and your dad had to take me home early. I'm surprised he even asked me out again.”

“But he did.”

“He did.”

“Then you had me. In a blizzard,” I added, turning the page in the photo album to a baby picture of me.

“And then you got pregnant with me!” Celeste said and pointed to a baby picture of her.

“God, you were an ugly baby,” I said.

“Dawn!” Mom said in her warning voice.

“Then Dad said, ‘we should get married, eh?' That's the worst proposal I've ever heard,” I said even though it was the only one I had ever heard of.

“Life isn't like the movies,” Mom replied as she brushed Celeste's bangs out of her eyes.

“Did you love Dad?” Celeste asked.

“Well, yeah, why else would I marry him?”

“Cuz you had me and you were pregnant with that one,” I said.

“That didn't matter. Grandpa told me, ‘you don't have to do this if you don't want to. We'll help you look after the little ones.'”

“Do you ever wish you didn't marry Dad?” I asked. It was a fair question because Mom complained about Dad's drinking to us all the time.

“Every day,” she said.

“Really?” Celeste asked, her eyes big with worry.

We could never tell when Mom was being serious. Neither Mom nor Dad were romantic and they mocked their relationship every chance they got, like a Catskills comedy team. “You're a nag.” “You're a cheap bastard.” “Your face makes me want to puke.” “People say I look like you!” Despite their protesting, we suspected that love was keeping them together, or a shared part in a homicide.

A.J.'s Wedding

My cousin A.J. married a white girl nearly a decade after Tabitha's wedding. It was the first mixed wedding in our family. “So what if she's a white girl? It's not a big deal,” everyone kept saying. A.J. had known the girl for years; the family all knew her. “It's not a big deal! So what if she's white?!”

A.J., like my older sister, was a family pet so everyone went to his wedding. The wedding itself, I missed. Having been a bridesmaid, I knew from experience that Catholic Church weddings were deadly boring. I knew that the real action was at the reception and this one promised to be the best reception yet — especially since I was legally allowed to join in the drinking fun.

The reception was in full tilt when we arrived. Everyone was drinking. The whites, the Natives, the grandmas, the grandpas, the teenagers, even toddlers were having a good time. The bride and groom were older and more laid back than any I'd ever seen. They seemed to be enjoying the party as much everyone else.

Nathan walked past with a piece of wedding cake wrapped in blue tinfoil. He waved it in my face. “See this? Girls are supposed to put it under their pillow and then you'll dream of the man you'll marry.”

“Why do you have it — you want a husband?”

Nathan showed his dimples. “Why not?”

I bought a beer. I sipped it because I never could drink beer fast. I had to work hard to get the beer down and by the time I'd finished it everyone else would be on his or her second. I'd try to force down another but my stomach would rebel against me.

Around midnight, a fight broke out between Elliot, the family troublemaker, and, well, everyone. Elliot had a troubled youth and a few years back a well-meaning uncle had thought it a good idea to give him boxing lessons. Now Elliot was well equipped to annoy everyone. He fought Nathan, then he fought the guys that held his arms back, then he fought the guys who held back the guys trying to fight him. He bounced off a bystander — who happened to be the bride's father — and took a swing at him. Then he fought Nathan again until finally he was surrounded on all sides. The men surged forward in a large group and dragged him to the nearest cop station, which happened to be across the street.

The white people left after that.

The wedding reception continued unabated until the hall closed. We lingered a few minutes in the foyer wondering what to do next before someone yelled, “Party on Big Eddy!”

I pulled up to the party address with Celeste and Nathan. A long line of people snaked up the stairs to the house, others stood around a bonfire behind the house. I went inside and went out again, too shy to make myself at home. I was surprised to see my mom in the living room surrounded by people, both young and old, as she sat on another woman's knee and laughed raucously.

Eventually Mom and her caretakers left but not before she assigned me an important task. “Look after your sister,” Mom slurred as she fell into the car. “She's the only sister you've got.”

Since I had two other sisters, I didn't take her words very seriously. Besides how could I be babysitting my sister, when I was looking for
him
?! “He” was the elusive cute guy who would kiss me and fall passionately in love with me. Then, everyone would be coming to my wedding! First, I had to find him.

I found him, or at least a reasonable facsimile, near the bonfire. He stood across from me, bathed in the warm light of the fire. Nathan called him Garfield. Garfield — it was a name befitting an angel. In my head I heard the Priest announcing, “I now pronounce Dawn and Garfield . . . ”

Garfield's eyes flirted with me and with my sister. I pretended not to see him; I pretended not to care. He stared at me across the fire. I smiled and sipped my beer. I spilt my beer down the front of my shirt. I laughed it off coolly. “Uh oh, alcohol abuse.”

He laughed, more at my stupidity than the joke. That was okay. Guys didn't mind if you were stupid; I knew at least that much about the opposite sex.

Garfield was older than me, a hockey player. He talked earnestly to Nathan about the team they were putting together. Nathan was having trouble concentrating because he had taken a handful of mushrooms earlier.

“I'm not playing hockey this season. My knee has a pin in it. A huge pin.” Nathan held his arms about a metre apart.

Garfield laughed.

Celeste wandered over, hand in hand with a dude.

“Who's this?” I asked.

Celeste smiled, “This is my boyfriend, Chris.”

“Albert,” the boy said. Then he and Celeste began making out by the fire; the slurping noises made it impossible to ignore them.

I checked in with Garfield; this didn't seem to be throwing him off. Across the bonfire my eyes met his. He smiled. I half-smiled. What now? Was he supposed to walk over here and take my hand? Or was I supposed to say something witty and smart-assed, perhaps make fun of The Pas and its various idiosyncrasies such as the way that parents attended the same parties as their kids?

No wait, smart-assed had never ever worked for me. So I stayed silent.

“What's wrong with you, Puddinghead? Why you so quiet?” Nathan turned to Garfield. “You should hear this girl, she's got a real mouth on her. Say something mean! Go on.”

“Oh Nathan,” I laughed gently, and smacked him on the arm. Nathan reacted like I had beaten him with a coat wire. He reared backwards and fell into the grass.

“She hit me!” he cried.

Celeste stopped kissing Albert-Chris and looked down at Nathan and then at me. “Why are you so mean?” she demanded.

“I didn't do anything!” I looked at the faces around the fire; everyone was staring back at me suspiciously.

Celeste knelt on the ground and petted Nathan's head. “There, there. She won't touch you anymore.”

Nathan nodded. “I was so scared. She was hitting me and hitting me.”