“I can’t believe Maria’s wearing white,” said Nickie.
I shrugged. “What color should she wear?”
“Gray!” Nickie said immediately. “To acknowledge having a brain! A little gray matter!”
“Actually, I saw something on PBS recently that said only the outer bark of the brain — and it does look like bark — is gray. Apparently the other half of the brain has a lot of white matter. For connectivity.”
Nickie snorted, as she often did when I uttered the letters PBS. “Then she should wear gray in acknowledgment of having half a brain.”
I nodded. “I get your point,” I said.
Guests were eating canapés on paper plates and having their pictures taken with the bride. Not so much with Maria’s new groom, a boy named Hank, which was short not for Henry but for Johannes, and who was not wearing sunglasses like everyone else but was sort of squinting at Maria in pride and disbelief. Hank was also a musician, though he mostly repaired banjos and guitars, restrung and varnished them, and that was how he, Maria, and Ian had all met.
Now the air was filled with the old-silver-jewelry smell of oncoming rain. I edged toward Ian, who was looking for the next song, idly strumming, trying not to watch his father eye Maria.
“Whatcha got? ‘I’ll Be There’?” I asked cheerfully. I had always liked Ian. He had chosen Maria like a character, met her on a semester abroad and then come home already married to her — much to the marveling of his dad. Ian loved Maria, and was always loyal to her, no matter what story she was in, but Maria was a narrative girl and the story had to be spellbinding or she lost interest in the main character, who was sometimes herself and sometimes not. She was destined to marry and marry and marry. Ian smiled and began to sing “I Will Always Love You,” sounding oddly like Bob Dylan but without the sneer.
I swayed. I stayed. I did not get in the way.
“You are a saint,” I said when he finished. He was a sweet boy, and when Nickie was little he had often come over and played soccer in the yard with her and Maria.
“Oh no, I’m just a deposed king of corn. She bought the farm. I mean, I sold it to her, and then she flipped it and bought this one instead.” He motioned toward the endless field beyond the tent, where the corn was midget and standing in mud, June not having been hot enough to evaporate the puddles. The tomatoes and marijuana would not do well this year. “Last night I had a dream that I was in West Side Story and had forgotten all the words to ‘I like to be in America.’ Doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.”
“No,” I said. “I guess not.”
“Jesus, what is my dad doing?” Ian said, looking down and away.
Ian’s father was still prowling the perimeter, a little drunkenly, not taking his eyes off the bride.
“The older generation,” I said, shaking my head, as if it didn’t include me. “They can’t take any change. There’s too much missingness that has already accumulated. They can’t take any more.”
“Geez,” Ian said, glancing up and over again. “I wish my dad would just get over her.”
I swallowed more wine while holding Ian’s lemonade. Over by the apple tree there were three squirrels. A threesome of squirrels looked ominous, like a plague. “What other songs ya got?” I asked him. Nickie was off talking to Johannes Hank.
“I have to save a couple for the actual ceremony.”
“There’s going to be an actual ceremony?”
“Sort of. Maybe not actual actual. They have things they want to recite to each other.”
“Oh yes, that,” I said.
“They’re going to walk up together from this canopy toward the house, say whatever, and then people get to eat.” Everyone had brought food, and it was spread out on a long table between the house and the barn. I had brought two large roaster chickens, cooked accidentally on Clean while I was listening to Michael Jackson on my iPod. But the chickens had looked OK, I thought: hanging off the bone a bit but otherwise fine, even if not as fine as when they had started and had been Amish and air-chilled and a fortune. When I had bought them the day before at Whole Foods and gasped at the total on my receipt, the cashier had said, “Yes. Some people know how to shop here and some people don’t.”
“Thirty-three thirty-three. Perhaps that’s good luck.”
“Yup. It’s about as lucky as two dead birds get to be,” said the cashier.
“Is there a priest or anything? Will the marriage be legal?” I now asked Ian.
Ian smiled and shrugged.
“They’re going to say ‘You do’ after the other one says ‘I do.’ Double indemnity.”
I put his lemonade down on a nearby table and gave him a soft chuck on the shoulder. We both looked across the yard at Hank, who was wearing a tie made of small yellow pop beads that formed themselves into the shape of an ear of corn. It had ingeniousness and tackiness both, like so much else created by people.
“That’s a lot of dos.”
“I know. But I’m not making a beeline for the jokes.”
“The jokes?”
“The doozy one, the do-do one. I’m not going to make any of them.”
“Why would you make jokes? It’s not like you’re the best man.”
Ian looked down and twisted his mouth a little.
“Oh, dear. You are?” I said. I squinted at him. When young I had practiced doing the upside-down wink of a bird.
“Don’t ask,” he said.
“Hey, look.” I put my arm around him. “George Harrison did it. And no one thought twice. Or, well, no one thought more than twice.”
Nickie approached me quickly from across the grass. “Mom. Your chickens look disgusting. It’s like they were hit by a truck.”
The wedding party had started to line up — except Ian, who had to play. They were going to get this ceremony over with quickly, before the storm clouds to the west drifted near and made things worse. The bridesmaids began stepping first, a short trajectory from the canopy to the rosebushes, where the I dos would be said. Ian played “Here Comes the Bride.” The bridesmaids were in pastels: one the light peach of baby aspirin; one the seafoam green of low-dose clonazepam; the other the pale daffodil of the next lowest dose of clonazepam. What a good idea to have the look of Big Pharma at your wedding. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Why hadn’t I thought of that until now?