“I was gonna say worried,” Vivian says, “but yeah,pukeyworks.”
“I just...” I’m hesitant to finish the sentence. Shana gives alittle flip of her chin to nudge me forward. “I feel strange about doing the song. In front of Dad. The whole thing is, like, about how happy Mom is since she met Ron.”
“Mags.” Vivian takes my hand. “It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful song. Mom and Ron will love it, and today is for them, so that’s all that matters. Dad chose to be here, so if he can’t handle it, that’s on h—”
“Vivvy!” Mom emerges from the sliding door in the back, looking panicked and pretty in her simple, long-sleeved white dress.
“Yeah?” Vivvy says, dropping my hand.
“Do you know where the rings are? Ron says you know where the rings are.”
“Yes, Mom, rings are safe, don’t worry.”
“Okay, thank god. Could you just come in and go over everything one last time with me and Ron?”
“Mom, it’ll all be clear during the ceremony, I promi—”
“Please, Vivvy! We’re flipping out a little!”
“Ron’s flipping out?”
“Well... Mainly me. But please?”
Vivian sighs and gives a comic roll of her eyes. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Mom applauds. I try to silence the voice in my head wondering if she’s ever neededmethat badly.
“You got this, Mags,” Vivian says, squeezing my shoulder before turning to Shana and Ember. “You all do. I can’t wait to finally see Angry Baby.” Glad she got the name right. We definitely shouldn’t switch it.
I nod, and Vivian makes a beeline to the house, a swagger in her step not unlike Misty’s.
How does one achieve such a swagger? I may never know.
“Let’s go inside and hide in the basement till this starts,” I say.
It’s a gorgeous ceremony.
Of course I expected nothing less from something engineered by Vivian, but, sitting there in the front row next to Shana and Ember, I’m still thrown by how moved I am. It helps that I haven’t seen Dad arrive yet, so I don’t have to feel uncomfortable as Vivian talks about when Mom and Ron first met at Barnes& fricking Noble, of all places. Mom was holding a book about Cleopatra, and Ron said it was really great, even though he’d actually read only a third of it, and they’d proceeded to stand in the aisle chatting for over an hour (leaving me wondering where the hell Mom was and what the plan was for dinner, but I’ve forgiven her). Vivian talks about Mom and Ron’s lake walks. She talks about how Mom seemed like a giddy teenager during that first year of dating, topped only by Ron, who literally clicked his heels together one night when they were waiting for a table at Vincenzo’s.
It’s all so charming and hilarious that I start to feel like the song I wrote is actually notenoughof a tribute, that I’m yet again going to offer up the dinky supermarket frozen pizza as Vivian presents a coal-fired pie made on premises with 100 percent fresh ingredients.
Somehow Vivian’s wizardry has even kept the granite boulders in the sky from releasing their haul of raindrops, which leaves the canopy feeling like an artful framing of the space rather than a crowd-size umbrella.
But the real triumph of the ceremony is when Mom and Ron read the vows they wrote for each other. This is another win that belongs to my sister, as Mom was fiercely resistant to the idea,saying again and again that she’s not a writer, pushing Vivian to look online and find some vows there. Vivian wouldn’t let it go, though, and Ron started to get really into the idea, enough so that he was eventually able to convince Mom.
His vows are very moving, but it’s Mom’s that send me spiraling into a snotty mess. I’ve never known her to write anything more involved than a to-do list or a two-sentence birthday card, so it’s sort of a revelation. She, too, talks about Barnes& Noble, how taken aback she was when this handsome man started chatting her up, partially because she found it shocking that a man would actually read a book. (I wince at this not-so-subtle dig at Dad, who famously hasn’t read one since college.) She says she felt better about her instincts when she later learned Ron hadn’t actually finished the Cleopatra book, but then was stunned all over again seeing Ron in the act of reading enough times that it was clear it wasn’t a charade.
The part of her vows that really gets me, though, is when she starts to get choked up and says that Ron saved her. “You really did,” she tells him, and he’s starting to cry too. “I was feeling so blocked. So stuck. And you helped me move again.”
And of course I start thinking about Carter. I mean, I’vebeenthinking about him all throughout today, but now the thought is this:
I wish he were here. Sitting next to me. Holding my hand. Laughing quietly with me at the parts of the ceremony that are funny, and even more quietly at the parts that are unintentionally funny.
And another thought is:
Maybe Carter savedme.I think about those months before we met: Vivian immersed in her junior year of college; Momimmersed in the world of, well, Ron; and Dad immersed in... the usual alternate plane of existence he chooses to reside on. I was feeling so alone.
And then... there he was. Scooping right next to me.
