Authors: Luanne Rice
“By the window,” she said.
Everyone moved across the living room to the big picture window overlooking Mount Hope harbor. It was dark out, and the living-room lamps cast cloudy brown reflections on the glass.
“We need candlelight,” Belinda whispered in Aunt Nora’s ear, and Aunt Nora nodded.
“It gets dark so early now,” Emma said, to make conversation.
Belinda found matches on the mantelpiece, and she lit two tall white candles in crystal candlesticks. She handed one to Emma, and they moved around the room lighting all the candles.
Through the window, you could see all the harbor lights. There was Lobsterville and the wharf twinkling at the right, and Minturn Ledge Light, its beam piercing the sky, at the left. Except for the chapel where her parents had gotten married, Belinda thought this was the best place anyone could have a wedding.
Judge Garrity began the ceremony with the old words, “We are gathered here to celebrate …”
Belinda tried to listen, but she was too busy gathering everyone together in her mind, all the people who should have been there to celebrate Aunt Nora’s wedding: her parents, T.J., Josie, Emma’s parents, Sean, their grandparents, and Great-granny Sheila.
Belinda had just about finished in time to hear Judge Garrity say, “I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
Willis took Aunt Nora’s head in his hands, tilted her face so it glowed in the candlelight and from all the love Aunt Nora had inside, and he kissed her. Belinda had never been to a wedding before, and she didn’t understand why such a happy occasion would make her feel so choked up.
Then Aunt Nora and Willis turned to face Belinda, Emma, and the judge, and from their great smiles and the way they opened their arms, you’d think they were ready to greet a hundred people.
“Can we call you ‘Uncle Willis’ now?” Emma asked.
“I’d love that,” he said.
“Oh, you girls,” Aunt Nora said. “Surprising me like this. You’re exactly like your mothers.”
“We know,” Belinda and Emma said at the exact same time.
D
on’t you wish we’d thought of it?” Bonnie asked, the day after Nora’s wedding. Reaching into the tank, she grabbed a small lobster. She weighed it on the overhead scale, then threw it into a crate full of seaweed with fourteen other lobsters.
“Our own sister gets married,” Cass said, “and it takes our daughters to crash the wedding. God, I’m proud of them.”
“If you start thinking about it, it’s depressing,” Bonnie said, holding her hand over the tank’s circulation jet. Cold salt water bubbled through her fingers. She watched Cass, dressed in yellow oilskin overalls, a red plaid jacket, and her Red Sox cap, throw lobsters into a crate marked “Wickenden Tavern.”
“What’s depressing? They’re thirteen, and they’re wild. We couldn’t hold them back if we tried. So let’s just be glad they decided to crash their aunt’s wedding instead of hitchhiking to Seattle.”
“I’m talking about
us.
Middle-aged suburbanites.”
Cass squealed. She dropped the lobster she was holding and made an exorcism cross with her index fingers. “Say you’re sorry!” she said. “It’s a well-known fact that once you start thinking you are something, you become it.”
“Alewives Park, Cass. Forty years old.”
“State of mind, Bonnie. Once you start thinking of yourself as a middle-aged suburbanite, you wind up spending entire days going to grocery stores in search of the best buy on coffee filters.”
“It did cross my mind to crash Nora’s wedding,” Bonnie said. “But I didn’t feel like stopping what I was doing.”
“Oh, dear. Do I want to know what that was?” Cass asked, her voice sinking.
“Ironing. While watching a soap opera.”
Cass resumed weighing lobsters. “That’s just considerate,” she said. “We were specifically uninvited to Nora’s wedding. First of all, I wouldn’t have given her the satisfaction of crashing her wedding.”
“Are you mad at her?”
“Furious. But still. It not only crossed my mind to crash it, I couldn’t think of anything else all day: the fact that she was getting married and no one from the family would be there. I planned what I was going wear to crash it, what clever reason I was going to give for showing up. Luckily, I had to work, then Zach came over.”
“That makes me feel a little better,” Bonnie said, but it didn’t. She watched Cass sort the lobsters. Cass in her oversized work clothes managed somehow to look more feminine and vulnerable than she did in a dress. Yet Bonnie was sure that that morning Cass had just thrown on whatever was most practical and comfortable. Bonnie, who spent an hour every morning dressing and making up, saw Cass’s careless style as a metaphor for why Cass didn’t feel like a suburban matron and Bonnie did.
“No, it doesn’t make me feel better,” Bonnie blurted out.
Cass looked up, surprised. “What’s wrong?”
“You don’t see the difference between you not crashing Nora’s wedding because of work and waiting for Josie’s speech teacher, and me not crashing because of ironing and a soap opera?”
“Look, we weren’t invited. Let it go.”
“I am in a rut,” Bonnie said.
“I think you have a nice life.”
“It’s
very
nice. But all of a sudden it’s scaring me.”
“Just because you didn’t crash Nora’s wedding?”
Josie had been talking to Barbie, walking her up and down the wooden stairs. Now she dropped the doll and started making hand signs in the air. Cass stopped working for a minute to watch.
“What’s she saying?” Bonnie asked.
“I have no idea. So far I know about ten words,” Cass said. “All
our names, ‘I love you,’ ‘good night,’ ‘tell me what happened,’ ‘stop that.’ The basics.”
“I’m impressed,” Bonnie said, watching Josie resume playing, totally involved with her doll.
“She’s doing better,” Cass said, watching Josie. “I’m terrified, of course, because she’s way ahead of me. Zach says she picks up quickly because the signs fill a void. I don’t need it, so I don’t learn as fast.”
“But you’ll learn, right?”
“Zach says it doesn’t work that way. I’ll learn the rudiments, but Josie will be fluent. It’ll be the difference between learning French in high school and being born in Paris.”
“Does it help with her tantrums?”
“She has rough spells. It’s a bad combination, a temper and a speech problem.”
“Temper runs in the family,” Bonnie said. “Have you and Dad made up?”
Cass shook her head, not taking her eyes off Josie. “I know he’s old-fashioned, set in his ways, all that. But you didn’t hear him call handicapped people freakish right in the middle of a conversation about Josie.”
“Every time I think I’m having a bad day, I should come see you,” Bonnie said. She pretended to dry her hands, head for the door. “Will you excuse me while I go home to my lovely suburban rut?”
Cass laughed. She sealed the Wickenden crate and kicked it toward the door. Then she started counting a new batch of lobsters, for the Wellsweep Restaurant.
“I’ve done some research,” Bonnie said, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Oh?”
“That brownie idea you had.”
“Good!” Cass said. She opened her mouth to say more, but she must have sensed Bonnie’s hesitancy.
“Well, lots of places have baskets by their cash registers, full of individually wrapped brownies, cookies, stuff like that.”
“I know, a dollar twenty-five for a cranberry muffin,” Cass said. “I’m telling you, you’ll rake it in.”
“Christmas craft shows are coming up,” Bonnie said. “I’m thinking about bringing a basket to one in Peacedale.”
The telephone rang twice—a signal from upstairs to pick up in the tank room. Cass answered. She whooped once, then stayed on another minute.
“Billy,” she said when she came back. “He’s been at the boatyard all week, getting the boat ready. He wants to launch her this afternoon.”
“Great!” Bonnie said, oddly let down. She was so used to helping Cass: soothing her, giving her support, listening to her talk about Josie. Sometimes Bonnie thought that she gave so smoothly, her sisters didn’t realize how much she needed back.
But Cass came around the tank, shook the water off her hands, and gave Bonnie a bone-squeezing handshake. “Sure, a boat launch is exciting,” Cass said, shaking Bonnie’s whole arm. “But we’re talking business launch here. I can say I was there on the ground floor.”
“Thanks, Cass,” Bonnie said, genuinely touched.
“And there’s nowhere to go but up, sistah. Stah.
Star.
” Cass stopped midway. “Well, look who’s here! Speak of the bride … What’s this? No honeymoon?”
Nora stepped into the tank room, sheepish, gazing at her sisters through newly feathered bangs. “We’re going to Savannah for two weeks in the spring; neither one of us could really get away from work now. Are you two mad?”
“Mad? Just because you didn’t invite us to your wedding? Are we mad, Cass?”
“Oh, nothing the ritual dunking of the bride won’t cure.” Cass swept magnanimously toward Nora, her arms extended.
“What ritual?” Nora asked, pulling back as first Cass, then Bonnie hugged her.
“It’s a little tradition, dates back to the early days of Mount Hope, sort of a play on the love-and-war theme.” Bonnie pulled her toward the lobster tank. Nora, elegant in cranberry cashmere, dug in her heels.
“Yeah, we love you, but this is war. You don’t ask your sisters to your wedding, you get dunked,” Cass said.
“Please, guys,” Nora said, laughing, then moving forward, as if she’d decided to give in. “Let me take off this sweater, will you? It cost a fortune. God, I just had my hair done yesterday …”
Suddenly, Cass stopped fooling around. She reached for Nora, pulled her close in a big hug. Bonnie looked on, surprised to feel tears in her eyes.
“I’m so happy for you,” Cass said.
“Thank you, both of you,” Nora said, as Bonnie moved forward.
“Tell us about it,” Cass said. “Belinda said you were beautiful.”
“They are so terrific, those girls,” Nora said. “They made me realize how much I wish you two had been there.”
“We wish that, too,” Cass said. “But …”
“But …” Bonnie said. She started to cry, realizing how hurt she had felt. Wiping away tears, she caught Cass doing the same thing. Looking into each other’s eyes, they started to laugh. Nora joined in, sounding sheepish.
“I was a jerk,” Nora said.
Instead of contradicting her, Cass and Bonnie hugged her harder. Then Cass found herself checking her watch. “I’d better go. Billy’s waiting.”
“Who’s going to the boat?” Bonnie asked Cass.
“Me and Josie, I guess. There’s no way I’d ever drag T.J. away from the phone this time of day, and Belinda’s studying for a test.”
“Leave Josie with me,” Bonnie offered.
“Are you sure?” Josie was playing quietly on the stairs, trying to get Barbie to surf on the back of a sand crab that had escaped from a tank.
Bonnie closed one eye as she figured out her schedule. “Sure. I have to pick up the kids at six. Does that give you enough time?”
“Definitely. I have to be home to feed mine before then.”
“Go launch.”
“Launch?” Nora asked.
“Billy’s boat,” Cass said, and Bonnie saw she could barely hold in her pride. “Today’s the day.”
“Wow,” Nora said, shaking her head. “I was so wrapped up in
me and Willis, I had no idea Billy was even close. I thought maybe next season …”
“See?” Cass said, edging for the door. “That’s the thing about eloping. You miss all those family-get-together news highlights like boat launches, speech therapists, Mom’s sore back, Dad’s retirement plans …”
“Stop,” Nora said, holding up her hand. “You’ll make me feel worse.”
“Worse? I was trying to make you feel better,” Cass said, blowing a kiss, disappearing out the door.
C
ass walked along the waterfront from Keating’s Wharf to the Mount Hope Boatyard. She knew Billy had a surprise planned because he’d kept her from visiting the boat the last few times she’d asked. Cass had seen her three weeks ago: out of the water, in the cradle, patchy below the water line, the bottom paint scraped off. Billy had had a long way to go to make her seaworthy.
She saw the boatyard two piers away, the black spars of a windjammer silhouetted by the tawny sunset. Her pace increased as she got closer. The cradle where Billy’s boat had been was empty: two weathered wooden supports standing bare in the yard. Then, hearing a whistle, she looked toward the water. Billy waved to her from the dock. “Over here,” he called.
Cass ducked her head against the bitter cold and ran over. The bib of her oilskin overalls scooped the wind inside; with both hands she held it close against her chest. She caught sight of Billy’s face: he had that look he’d get on her birthday and Christmas, when he knew in advance she was going to love her present. So she kept her eyes from the boat, suspended by webbing from the Travelift fifteen feet away. She made a show of holding her right hand like a blinder to her face.
“Don’t look,” Billy said.
“I have to.” Cass sneaked a peek; she spied a white hull and cabin, red trim, glistening brass. “Wow,” she said, covering her eyes again. Billy came over to her. His dark curls tossed in the wind, and his eyes held hers.
“This is it, eh?” Cass asked. “Billy Medieros’s boat.” She felt herself grinning so wide she thought her face would crack. From the minute she’d met him, she had thought of Billy as a sailor, and now she was going to help him launch his own boat. He slid his hand between her overalls and the wool plaid jacket; he tugged the small of her back, and she bumped his pelvis.
“Hey, Billy,” she said. She had never seen him like this, so totally confident in his own power. Their marriage, the children’s births … When the babies were born he had held them for the camera, paraded them before the relatives, but there had been a tentativeness that bordered on reserve, as if he were overwhelmed, a little unsure of himself.
No reserve here. Billy held Cass close, looked her straight on, couldn’t stop smiling. Finally, he held his hand over her eyes like a blindfold. “Watch it … I have you … there’s a rock,” he said, leading her across the gravel-strewn yard.