Sister of the Bride by Beverly Cleary

Author:Beverly Cleary [Cleary, Beverly]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

After Buster’s shredding of the wedding veil, hostility between brother and sister grew more intense. Barbara shoved Buster outside whenever she found the cat in the house. “You’re just an old nuisance!” she would say, and slam the door. Then Gordy would begin to sing Careless Love in an irritating way that Barbara felt amounted to blackmail.

At the same time plans for the wedding went ahead, and because most of the planning was done by telephone, Barbara became quite openly an eavesdropper. Almost every evening Rosemary called with an order or a suggestion, and almost always the call ended abruptly when her twenty cents had run out. Then Mrs. MacLane would call her back so that the toll would go on the family’s telephone bill. Aunt Josie came over several evenings to talk over the wedding. She was full of ideas. It was very smart this year for bridesmaids to carry garlands of ivy instead of flowers. And had Rosemary thought of having the wedding veil gathered onto a coronet?

And look like a ballerina about to dance Swan Lake, Barbara thought privately. As for carrying a garland of ivy—she only hoped the matter would not be brought up again. It was always best to let Aunt Josie babble on and to hope that most of her ideas would fade away. Next Aunt Josie suggested blue polished cotton with bouquets of hydrangeas. Barbara, who wanted to carry flowers, not shrubbery, did not mind at all when this suggestion was forgotten.

Then one morning before school, while Barbara was pressing the full skirt she was wearing, without bothering to take it off, her mother announced, “The Amys want to give Rosemary a shower, and we thought next Saturday would be a good time. Rosemary is coming home, anyway, and there won’t be many Saturdays before the wedding.”

Barbara, who had lifted the front of her skirt over the end of the ironing board and was trying to press it with the iron pointed toward herself, started to protest, Oh, Mother, not the Amys! but caught the words in time. Any shower was sure to be fun, and this was the moment to keep her opinion of the Amys as a group to herself. “Will I be invited?” she asked.

“Yes. You and Aunt Josie and Gramma, because you are family,” said Mrs. MacLane. “Here, let me press the back of your skirt before you burn yourself.”

The first party, and she would get to go, thought Barbara ecstatically, as she lifted the back of her skirt over the ironing board and her mother began to run the iron over it. Fun, excitement, presents—lots of presents, because there were at least twenty-five Amys—good things to eat, although half of the Amys would protest that really they shouldn’t, they simply had to lose a few pounds. Barbara could hardly wait for Saturday to come. “Which Amy is giving the shower?” she asked, pulling her pressed skirt from the ironing board and feeling it warm against the backs of her legs.

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