Good Riddance(73)

“I’d have flagged down a housekeeper.”

“I was going after something more like ‘Yes, I thank my lucky stars that you and your nimble fingers are here.’”

“That, too.” I turned around, fully buttoned, for inspection.

“Quite spectacular,” he said.

I took a step back, and said, “Vous, aussi.” I also noted that his silver tie made us look coordinated.

“I brought three ties up with me, so not so much of a coincidence.”

“Very thoughtful,” I said. It was ten to five. “We should go now.”

He offered me his arm even though it was just a walk out of our room to the elevator. Two couples, the men in tuxes, older, joined us when it stopped at a lower floor.

“Are we all going to the Armstrong wedding?” I asked.

They answered with smiles and nods.

One woman, who was wearing a purple-feathered fascinator, asked, “Are you the couple from New York?”

Jeremy, grinning, asked, “What gave us away?”

“Bonnie said that Peter had a daughter she hadn’t met yet who lived in New York.”

Just like that.

I said, “The daughter part of that hasn’t quite been established.”

“Oh! I’m sorry! Bonnie gave me the distinct impression . . .”

The bigmouth’s husband said, “Sheila and Bonnie are very close.”

As the doors opened, I made myself say, “Enjoy the evening,” in dignified fashion rather than the scolding she deserved. Life had taught me that the Sheila you have words with on your way to an event is the Sheila who inevitably ends up at your table.



I’d met Peter Armstrong exactly once, at the reunion, newly elected to state office and having fulfilled his most-likely-to-succeed early promise. He was a very good-looking sixty-eight-year-old groom, dressed in black, the kind of sharp suit actors wear to the Academy Awards instead of a tux. Bonnie came down the aisle on the arm of what must’ve been her father, who was wearing a kilt, which explained the bagpipe soloist. In its understated elegance, her dress, with its deep ivory silk, its sleeves to the elbow, the pearls of a political wife, seemed to say, Yes, this is my second marriage; I know that, so I’m not going over-the-top bridal.

Her two daughters were also manifestations of good taste: empire-waisted matching black velvet dresses with lace collars, skewing younger than their preteen ages.

Had I been expecting cheesy? I must’ve. I hadn’t been to a wedding since my own, which had been a bare-bones ceremony without—I could see in retrospect—any feeling. This one was unexpectedly touching, performed by a judge who seemed to know—in fact, love—them both. Maybe Bonnie wasn’t the adulteress I’d pegged her for, or Peter the sexual harasser of his office manager. I checked the seats around me—the underpopulated groom’s side, where the oldest celebrants were sitting—in case Peter’s parents were there. Dead or alive? I’d never asked. His best man, next to him at the makeshift altar, looked enough like Peter to be a brother. Had he gone to Pickering High, too? My dad would know.

And then there were the vows delivered by the bride and groom facing each other, voices choked. Maybe I shouldn’t have let one crazy act of mail vandalism color my opinion. Bonnie seemed so committed, so adoring. And today she was beautiful. The very act of hiring her must’ve sealed this lifelong bachelor’s fate.

I found myself getting teary-eyed. I looked over to my father and Kathi, in our row, and caught the moment that my father reached for Kathi’s hand. Weddings did that to people. Just as I was thinking it was too bad I wasn’t here with a boyfriend who’d be similarly moved by the juxtaposition of wedding vows and me, Jeremy took my hand.

It was the familiar service, very Book of Common Prayer–ish, plus customized vows about their domestic life, pets, the State House, their always-and-foreverness, the two girls he was getting in the bargain. And then they were pronounced husband and wife to a round of applause, a bagpipe recessional, and, though I could’ve been mistaken, a smile from Peter that landed directly on me.



Our table: my dad and Kathi, plus the mayor of Pickering, who was a son of the groom’s high school classmate who’d died tragically and heroically trying to rescue the driver of an overturned car on I-93. How had I not known that Pickering had elected a gay mayor? Or did Pickering not realize they had?

I told him I’d moved away two-plus years ago but surely would’ve voted for him.

“Did you change your voter registration?” he asked.

“He’s thinking absentee ballot,” my father explained.

Also seated with us: the mayor’s mother. And, oddly not at some secondary head table, were Bonnie’s mother and stepfather. Was this because I was considered a branch of the family? They’d driven up from Danbury, Connecticut, and would be taking the granddaughters back with them when Bonnie and Peter headed to Santa Barbara for their honeymoon.

To me, they looked a little tight-lipped about the marriage we’d just witnessed. I didn’t have to imagine the whys and wherefores of that because, upon hearing that my father had been Peter’s high school principal, Bonnie’s mom asked what kind of youngster Peter had been. “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree,” the stepfather added.

My father said, “Top student. Went on to Dartmouth.”