Someplace Like This by Renee Ashley

Author:Renee Ashley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504012294
Publisher: The Permanent Press (ORD)

XI

THE WEDDING

The wedding is al fresco. Riva’s great-aunt on her mother’s side is scurrying around the yard, chattering like a blue jay to anyone who will listen. “They have been blessed with a beautiful day,” she chirps, meaning she had her doubts about this whole unorthodox outdoor set-up, but now, somehow, it’s all worked out OK.

Riva’s mother’s garden is alive with wet, lush color, a frenzy of pastel profusion, like old ladies’ kisses; her father is nowhere to be seen. He did not give her away during the ceremony; some man, some older man in a peach-colored linen suit, whom I have never seen before, took his place. The woman standing next to me whispered, if it is possible to whisper and be strident at the same time, that he is Riva’s new stepfather. The tone was scathing. Evidently, Riva’s gone through quite a succession of stepfathers. The woman’s theory is that when Mom gets bored, she finds a husband in a different part of the country. In increments, she has made her way to these eastern suburbs—just withing reach of Riva. “Running fire,” I think was the term the woman used. It is too bad about Riva’s father. I always liked him. He used to buy us ice cream on those miserable hot days when we were too uncomfortable to play and we’d hang around and bother him while he was trying to do the yard work. I think he never wanted to do that work anyway, but, in what we hoped was mock exasperation, he’d throw down whatever he had in his hands, a rake or an edger, sometimes a bag of clippings (we’d watch them roll back out and clump back over the grass), and he’d say, “Oh, what the hell.” Then he’d go to the garage, drag out his rusty J.C. Higgins black racer, and we’d go, one of us straddling the seat, one of us with our butt in the basket, and Mr. Alstairs standing in between, pedalling like a crazy man in the heat, off to get ice cream. It never failed: he always got a double dip orange sherbet for himself. Her mother never had much to do with us kids.

If I had been asked to pick a wedding and match it to Riva, it would not be this one. This whole affair is light and airy. Riva is less light and airy than anyone I know. She is small, but solid and brooding. And today she is surrounded by flitty women dressed in chiffon, men in light-colored suits, some in shirtsleeves now that the ceremony is over. Almost nobody is wearing a hat and none of this seems to be being taken seriously at all. It is froth, aerated and insubstantial. It is like the champagne.

The minister is a bland man, slight and probably balding—it’s hard to tell—and before the ceremony I could not have picked him out of the crowd. (He does not wear any sort of ritual garb, which is too bad, actually, because I have rather come to like a certain amount of ritual.

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