“Okay, Mom.” Lil seemed to shrink a bit in her mother’s presence, her eyes widening with what Sadie thought were tears. But then Lil caught sight of her friends and smiled, unsure of whom to greet first, and cried, “Beth! Oh my God! You look beautiful! I love your dress! Are you wearing lipstick? It looks great!” Before Beth could answer, Lil had embraced her in a warm, perfumed hug. “It’s so good to see you. We thought you’d never get here. We missed you last night.” And with that, she launched into a thousand questions: How was Beth’s apartment? Did she like Queens? Were Dave and Tal coming over, as well, or would they meet them at the synagogue? Was Sadie wearing her hair up or down? How were the flowers? Had her eyebrows turned out even? And could they please keep old cousin Paula away from her? Who had brought her back here anyway? Everyone knew she was a complete nuisance.
Somehow, they managed to coax Lil into Sadie’s room—unchanged since Sadie’s childhood, with its green and white toile coverlet and curtains—and sit her down at the dressing table. Much discussion ensued over whether Lil should dress or have her makeup applied first, until Elaine and Rose decided the matter: Lil should dress first, then a large cloth would be draped over her as Emily applied her makeup. (“Overdo it,” Elaine hissed at Emily in the hallway, laying a tan, bare arm conspiratorially on Emily’s back, the beading along the edge of her turquoise dress scraping Emily’s pale shoulder. “We don’t want her to look pasty.”) Lil pulled on scant tulle underwear—a gift from Sadie—and a long-lined bra, then attached stockings to the bra’s dangling garters, slapping away Cousin Paula’s attempts at help. “This is so porn star,” said Emily. “I know, this thing makes my boobs huge,” Lil intoned, with a wry smile, fastening around her waist a glaring white crinoline, and, finally—thus trussed and plumped—slipping the heavy dress over her head, to the oohs and aahs of the girls, and a grimace from Cousin Paula.
“You wouldn’t really call that dress white, would you, Elaine?” Paula asked. “It’s almost gold, isn’t it?” She stopped to scrutinize the heavy satin between thumb and forefinger. “Is it actually a wedding dress?”
“It’s white,” snapped Lil. “Mom, can you button me up?”
The sky clouded over, threatening rain, and Tal and Dave arrived, looking absurdly old and handsome, transformed by their black suits and glossy ties. Lil rushed up to hug them, though they seemed slightly afraid of her, in her thick lipstick and big, costumey dress, her black hair pulled back from her face in a heavy bun. “Lil, you look beautiful,” whispered Dave, as if apologizing for his stiff embrace. Tal smiled, took her hands, and pulled her an arm’s length away. “Gorgeous,” he said.
“Okay, kids,” called Rose, with a clap of her manicured hands, “I hate to break this up, but we need to get going. Start heading for the door.”
Moments later, it seemed to Lil, she arrived at the rabbi’s study, where Tuck was waiting for her by a diamond-paned window, his mother fussing with his tie. “Mom,” he said, grinning brilliantly at Lil, so brilliantly that her irritation and anxiety fell away, and she laughed with relief at the sight of him. “Oh my God,” he said when she came into full view. It was all she could do not to wrap her arms around him and press her face to his cheek, which still showed the strokes of the razor. “Shall we get started?” said the rabbi, and they signed the wedding contract—Tuck squeezing her hand—then she was walking down the aisle, bits of whispers and coughs and laughter wafting uneasily toward her, her mother on her right, smelling faintly of White Shoulders and Max Factor pressed powder, her father on her left, bald pate glowing. Both of them were, to her surprise, smiling. They were happy, she realized, or at least happier than she’d expected they’d be about this marriage to a boy they’d met but once. Not that she’d cared; she’d long ago realized that nothing she did could truly please her parents. “But that’s how young people do it, Barry,” her mother had insisted back in May, when she’d given them the news. “Tuck’s thirty, mom,” Lil had said impatiently. “We’re not that young.” But now, as she walked down the aisle, with a hundred sets of eyes uncomfortably focused on her slow progress, she felt, really, much as she had on the first day of kindergarten, dressed in her stiff, unfamiliar uniform, unsure of what awaited her. Her mother, for once, was right.
Standing in a crowd around the chuppa—two poles held by Tal and Dave, two held by friends of Tuck’s—the girls, at first, felt faintly uncomfortable, looking out at the rows of people before them, unable to fidget or fuss with their hair. Then, slowly, they began to relax, whispering mildly to one another. They held little white cards in their hands, inscribed with the blessings each would recite at the appointed moment. None of them was familiar with this bit of ritual—even Tal, whose mother ran a kosher catering business and who’d actually gone to Hebrew school—but then, they weren’t familiar with any sort of wedding custom: this was the first wedding they’d attended as grown-ups.
One by one they stepped up and read their blessings, which were strangely simple—“Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, King of the universe, Creator of Human Beings” and “Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, King of the universe, Who has created everything for Your glory”—and somber, and even, Dave said later, generic, just your basic prayers, praising God, nothing about marriage specifically, until Tal, handing his chuppa pole to Emily, stepped up to the bima and read, in his calm, mesmerizing way, his cheeks blaring red at the center, his dark eyes fixed on the guests in the pews below:
Gladden the beloved companions as You gladdened Your creatures in the garden of Eden. Blessed are You, Adonai, Who gladdens groom and bride.
The synagogue, which had seemed quiet before, fell into a deep, stunned silence, contemplating the groom and bride before them. She’s really doing this, thought Beth. She’s a bride. And her heart began to beat faster, so much faster that she nearly missed her cue to step up to the bima herself and read her poem, a short thing by Linda Pastan, which had seemed appropriately unsentimental when she’d chosen it, but as she read, the words—all simple, all arranged in plain, declarative sentences, rather like, she realized, the Seven Blessings—began to accrue, taking hold of her in an unexpected way. Her voice wavered, and as she reached the last line—“Because everything is ordained / I said yes”—she broke into a small sob. Mortified, she stood, frozen, swallowing back tears, staring out at the people in the pews, the rows and rows of white-haired ladies, the assorted young people, some of whom she knew and some of whom she didn’t. Some were crying a bit, as well, including her friends standing around the chuppa. Including Dave, who smiled ruefully at her. They hadn’t yet spoken, had merely nodded at each other across Sadie’s bedroom, the girls forming a shield around her.
Moments later, Tuck stepped heavily on the glass, grabbed Lil around the waist, and kissed her roughly, lifting her up off the ground. “Mazel tov,” shouted Dr. Roth in his loud, rheumy voice. And the crowd began clapping and shouting. Quickly, the moment passed, and a flock of old ladies began moving slowly down the aisles, holding one another’s arms and peering around them through thick, oversized lenses. These were Lil’s elderly aunts—her great-aunts, really, but since neither of her parents had siblings, she called them her aunts. There were twelve or fourteen or twenty of them, and they all had thrilling Jazz Age names like Fritzi and Ruby and Ella and Minna, and had so long outlived their husbands that, Lil said, it was hard to remember they’d ever had them. Lil herself was named after one—the youngest on the Roth side and Dr. Roth’s favorite, who’d died tragically in a boating accident somewhere in the Catskills, when Dr. Roth was a teen. Her mother had wanted to name her Jessica.