That Summer(50)

“Oh, there’s nothing like a wedding for a good cry,” Lydia said, clomping down the steps in her huge white slingbacks. “Everyone needs a good cry now and then.”

My mother was still holding my hand as we walked through the hallway and out the door to the car. When I’d come home with Ashley she’d only hugged me so tight it hurt before letting me go upstairs for a shower and a long nap, skipping the rehearsal dinner altogether. When I woke up I found her and Ashley at the kitchen table, drinking wine and laughing, their voices drifting up like music. I sat in my nightgown and drank ginger ale with them, and we talked about the old times: when Ashley was ten and almost burnt the house down with her Easy-Bake oven, and when I was six and decided to run away, packing my red patent-leather suitcase with nothing but washcloths and underwear. My mother was laughing, her face flushed pink like it always was when she drank, telling the stories that for so long had remained in the no-man’s land of the divorce, uncomfortable for what they no longer represented. Now we laughed about my father’s hair and about Ashley’s boyfriends, the timeline of boys, each with a quirk we remembered better than his name. And we laughed while it rained and the air smelled sweet blowing in the back door, like the flowers that bloomed just outside. The kitchen was warm and bright and I knew I would remember this night, in the same misty way I’d remembered all the good things, as a time when things were as perfect as they could be. Another summer to reach back to, that week in Virginia Beach now tucked away with the other, older memories. Later, when Ashley was gone and my mother and I tried to fill this house ourselves, I’d look back to that night and remember every detail, from Ashley’s ring glittering as she sipped her wine to my mother’s bare feet beside me on the chair, flecked with grass clippings. It would be a good place to start over.

I held my mother’s hand as we walked to the car, knowing that things would be different now. My mother and I would have to start our own memories, maybe in a new setting. She’d go to Europe, because I’d make her, and I’d get another job, away from the mall, and start again with the fall and my junior year. My sister would be with Lewis and I would know that she was happy, there in her new apartment, without me on the other side of the wall. I’d have to let her go. And I would start my own timeline now, with the faces of my own boys marking the days and months and years.

I kept wanting to find Ashley, to tell her these things, but at the church it was crowded and crazy, with everyone running around and Ashley always behind a closed door or being whisked past in a blur of white. I stood in line with the other bridesmaids, Carol Cliffordson nowhere in sight, symmetry be damned. I held my bouquet and said I was fine, really, it was just a twenty-four-hour bug. I’d been a bridesmaid before: I knew what to do. And when the music started I stepped forward and followed the girl before me to the end of the aisle, past Casey and her parents and Lorna Queen and finally my mother and Lydia, all the while wishing I’d had time to say something to Ashley. Something about the day before, and how I was sorry. About how I would miss her and that I understood now about Sumner, and how he had brought us back together and given us something in common again. The night before, we’d been so caught up in the past that I couldn’t make myself think ahead to this day and what came next, for either of us. I’d gone to bed and listened to her in the room beside me just as I had every other night of my life, not realizing that the next morning would be too late.

The organist started “Here Comes the Bride” and we all turned to the back of the church, expectant, and there she was. My father was grinning, his arm linked with hers as they took the first step together. Everyone was oohing and aahing because she was beautiful, white and gliding and perfect, and I watched her come towards me, a small smile on her face. I saw Lewis blushing and my mother dabbing her eyes and I thought about all we’d been through, my sister and I, the fights and the good times and every day we’d had that led up to this one and suddenly I was crying. I knew my mascara was running and I was the only one up there in front so close to bawling, but still the tears came, rolling down my cheeks as she got closer and her own eyes met mine from beneath her veil. I wanted to say it all then, but before I could speak she stepped away from my father and put her arms around me, hugging me tightly, her bouquet against my neck. I smelled flowers, my mother’s garden, as I held her and knew I didn’t have to say anything. My sister was wiser than I ever gave her credit for. She held me and whispered she loved me before pulling back, wiping her own eyes.

I knew it then. For me and Ashley, there wasn’t any time left to think back to that summer and the beach and a boy who charmed us and disappointed us. There was only what stretched out ahead, years full of new summers and promise, with all the time in the world left to start again. My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest.