Chapter 4 - The Country Club Rehearsal
Brookmere Country Club sat behind four miles of white split-rail horse fencing in the rolling hills south of West Chester. The main clubhouse had been built in the 1970s to resemble a Virginia plantation house, with faux-brick chimneys that vented nothing and six massive fluted columns made of fiberglass that groaned faintly whenever the November wind came off the golf course.
The rehearsal had been scheduled for five o’clock on Friday, November 14.
Ren and I arrived at four-forty-five. She was wearing her dark wash jeans, her canvas sneakers, and a navy-blue wool pea coat that had belonged to a cousin two years earlier. Under her arm, held tightly against the brass buttons of her coat, was the yellow paper basket. She had repaired the frayed corner with two strips of Scotch tape, and inside she had placed three pinecones she had collected from the preschool playground that afternoon.
"To give it weight," she had explained in the car. "So the draft from the big fans doesn't flip it upside down."
The ballroom smelled of damp carpet, industrial floor wax, and the faint, sweet residue of thousands of catered prime rib dinners. An event coordinator named Siobhan—a woman in her late twenties with an iPad strapped to her left wrist like a medical monitor and a headset looped through her blonde hair—was standing on the riser in front of the unlit fireplace, her voice barking out over the empty room.
"Groomsmen on the left, staggered by height! No, Preston, don't look at the doors, look at the brass floor outlet! That’s your mark! If you stand on the outlet, the photographer’s flash doesn't bounce off the brass sconces!"
Preston stood on the mark, looking bored, wearing an emerald-green fleece vest over a tattersall shirt. His father, Ted Hail, stood three paces back, hands jammed into the pockets of his corduroy trousers, whispering something to Maryanne, who was holding Sloan’s hand with the iron grip of a border collie managing an unruly lamb.
Ren and I stood near the double doors at the back of the room, beneath a crystal chandelier that had three dead bulbs in the inner ring.
Mom arrived at my elbow without a sound, moving across the oatmeal-colored carpet in her sensible leather pumps. She reached down, took one of Ren’s wheat-colored braids between her fingers, and gave it a sharp, testing tug.
"Did you use conditioner?" Mom murmured. "It looks dry, Darcy. I told you, Maryanne’s cousins are coming down from Connecticut. They notice these things."
"She’s fine, Mom," I said.
Siobhan tapped her iPad with a stylus. "Alright, people! Procession order! Let’s run the entrance from the foyer! First out is the officiant, followed by the groom and the best man! Then the bridesmaids, paired with the groomsmen! Then our flower girl, Sloan Hail!"
Ren took one step forward, her sneakers squeaking faintly on the carpet. She looked up at Siobhan, her small hand tightening around the raffia handle.
Siobhan kept reading from the screen. "Sloan drops petals every three paces until she reaches the second row of chairs, then she transitions to the Hail family pew on the right! Then our maid of honor, Caroline! Then the bride with her father! Everyone clear?"
The silence that followed was small, but it had teeth.
Ren didn't move. She stood with her feet planted, her pinecone-weighted basket pressed against her stomach, her gray-green eyes blinking once, twice, as she processed the names. She looked at Sloan, who was already skipping toward the center aisle, swinging her antique Nantucket wicker basket with practiced theatrical grace.
Then Ren looked up at me.
"Mommy?" she whispered. "Where am I?"
I felt the blood leave my face, my skin turning as cold as the glass doors behind us. I took Ren’s hand, walked the twenty paces down the center aisle, and stopped three feet from where Kelsey was standing with her bridal bouquet—a cluster of white silk peonies wrapped in floral tape—held at her waist.
"Kelsey," I said. My voice was very low, but the entire room—the eight groomsmen, the four bridesmaids, Preston’s parents, and the coordinator—went completely still. "Where is Ren on the procession list?"
Kelsey didn't look at me. She looked over my left shoulder at the fireplace mantel, her fingers picking at the satin ribbon on her bouquet. Her lower lip began to tremble with that familiar, rehearsed agony.
"Darcy, please," Kelsey muttered, her voice barely audible. "Not now. Siobhan only has the room until six. The country club has a corporate retirement dinner coming in at six-thirty."
"Where is she, Kelsey?"
Kelsey’s eyes flashed with sudden, vicious irritation—the raw, unvarnished anger of someone whose convenience had been interrupted by a moral reality. She stepped off the riser, leaned down until her face was twelve inches from mine, and let the words come out in a sharp, hissing whisper that carried across the first three rows of chairs.
"She’s too annoying, Dar."
Ren was standing right beside my hip. She didn't flinch, but her small hand inside mine went completely limp.
"She asks questions about everything," Kelsey hissed, her voice rising now that the poison had broken the surface. "She wanted to know why the candles weren't real wax. She wanted to know why Preston's brother had a tattoo on his wrist. Maryanne’s family expects this to look like a real wedding, not an episode of Romper Room. Sloan knows how to walk. Sloan doesn't talk during the prayers."
I looked at my sister—the girl whose braces I had paid for when our father’s union had gone on strike in 2012, the girl whose college textbooks had been billed to my credit card for four consecutive semesters.
Before I could speak, Mom arrived at my right elbow. Her hand didn't touch my arm; it touched the back of my neck, her thumb pressing into the muscle behind my ear with that specific, sharp pressure she had used when I was ten years old and had dropped an antique teacup during a Christmas open house.
"Then don't bring her tomorrow," Mom said.
Her voice was entirely calm. It was the exact tone she used when deciding whether the green beans needed another four minutes in the steamer.
"She's seven, Mom," I said, the words coming out like chips of granite. "Kelsey asked her in June. She has practiced for five months."
"And circumstances have changed," Mom replied, looking over my head at Maryanne Hail, who was adjusting Sloan’s ringlets near the front row with complete, ostentatious concentration. "We have to be flexible, Darcy. The Hails are providing the orchestra for the reception. They’re providing the car service for the bridal party. If Maryanne feels that Sloan is the appropriate choice for the visual balance of the ceremony, then we respect that. Don't be so selfish."
From the second row of the guest chairs, Dad stayed seated. He had his winter coat over his knees, his hands folded across his belly, his eyes fixed on the tips of his own brown dress shoes. He didn't look up. He didn't move a muscle.
"Don't start drama, Darcy," Dad called out from the second row, his voice flat, tired, and entirely devoid of courage. "Not here. Not in front of Preston’s people."
Ren tugged at my wool coat. Her voice was very small, coming from somewhere deep inside her ribcage. "Mommy? Am I not in it?"
I looked down at her. Her small face was white, her gray-green eyes wide and unblinking, her mouth set in a thin, trembling line that she was trying with all her seven-year-old might to keep straight. A single paper petal—cut from red construction paper and glued to the raffia handle three months ago—had come loose during her march down the aisle. It fluttered down through the conditioned air and settled onto the oatmeal-colored carpet between my boots and Kelsey’s heels.
Nobody moved to pick it up.
"No, baby," I said, my voice ringing clear and steady through the Brookmere Country Club ballroom, reaching every corner of that fake-brick, polyester-draped room. "You're not in it. And neither am I."
I turned on my heel, took Ren’s hand in mine, and walked toward the double doors.
Behind us, Kelsey let out a sharp, dramatic sob that sounded like an engine failing to turn over. "Darcy! Are you serious? Darcy, it's my wedding!"
Mom’s voice followed us into the foyer, rising in pitch as the distance grew. "Darcy Lynn! You turn around right now! You are ruining your sister's day before it even starts!"
We pushed through the heavy glass exterior doors into the November dusk. The cold air hit my face like a wet towel, clean and biting and smelling of fallen leaves and distant woodsmoke.
I walked to the station wagon, unlocked the passenger side, and lifted Ren into her booster seat. As I reached across her to pull the shoulder belt down, a heavy fist pounded on the driver’s side glass.
Dad was standing on the asphalt, his coat unbuttoned, his breath coming in short, gray puffs of steam.
"Roll the window down, Darcy," he barked, tapping his class ring against the glass.
I rolled it down two inches.
"What the hell is the matter with you?" Dad said, leaning down so his bloodshot eyes were level with mine. "Your sister is inside crying her eyes out. Maryanne Hail is watching this whole thing. You're making us look like white trash from the flats. You go back in there, you leave the kid with Brenda, and you stand in the line like you're supposed to."
"Did you hear what Kelsey called her, Dad?" I asked.
"She's a kid!" Dad shouted, his face turning the dark, mottled purple of a beet. "Kids get their feelings hurt! They get over it! Ren won't remember this five minutes from now! But your sister is going to remember her maid of honor walking out on her rehearsal for the rest of her life!"
"I'll remember it," Ren’s voice came from the booster seat.
Dad stopped. His mouth stayed open for a second, his eyes shifting from me to the small girl sitting behind the glass, clutching her yellow cardstock basket against her ribs with both hands.
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"Ren won't remember," Dad muttered again, but the volume had leaked out of him, leaving only the thin, sour residue of an old man who had spent forty years choosing the path of least social resistance. "Don't let this touch Christmas, Darcy. I’m warning you. Don't let this touch Kauai."
I rolled the window up until the glass seated into the rubber frame, shifted into reverse, and backed out of the space without looking at him again.
