Normally I am received quite warmly.
Get thee behind me, he growled. Satan.
In his mind (and only in his mind, for he had not moved or been outwardly conscious for many hours now) he drew back his arm in an awkward, preparing-to-throw-a-karate-chop motion that, in his vital years, he had often directed at underlings who annoyed him beyond a certain limit.
As if intending to strike me (!).
Well, I never.
—
I launched out through the wall, floated to the ground, stumbled across the drive, past the auto and the fountain of the golden dog.
Because upset, I found myself sinking into the earth to such an extent that soon only the tip of my hairdo was visible, scootering along that asphalt surface, somewhat resembling the fin of a shark.
A solitary nightbird stood in my path, watching as my hairdo tip progressed toward it, perhaps mistaking it for prey, until my fin passed directly through its puffy chest, giving it a fright, sending it up to the lowest branch of an overhanging tree to sit there flustered, wondering what had just happened to it.
Managing gradually to compose myself, I returned to the surface and found myself standing before a redwood fence hung heavily with star jasmine.
From the other side came the sounds of the wedding crowd.
Feeling peevish, I passed through.
The ceremony was over, dinner about to begin.
From across the yard came a smell I associated with (mygoodness) “Jardine’s Smorgasbord”: a combined smell of “mashed potatoes,” “green beans,” and “just-baked bread.”
Oh, gosh, yes: “Jardine’s.”
In “Indiana.”
Along a wide bend in “Sherwood Ave.”
Among that familiar row of “scrawny pines.”
Under an awning, two chefs sliced away at massive slabs of beef and ham as a third chef fastidiously adjusted the position of an even larger turkey. On the far side of a three-story glass wall, a stream of children appeared, spilling like a candy-colored waterfall down a stairway inside. Two of their number struggled ineptly with a sliding door until a frail old man joined them in the struggle, pulling the door open just wide enough for the child-stream to exit and flow, with a delighted high-pitched interrogatory babble, over to the turkey-adjusting chef. One little girl now reaching up timidly to touch the turkey, the chef wagged a colorfully sprigged leg at her, and the entire child-stream reversed itself in terror and fled back inside through the narrow door-gap, nearly knocking over the helpful old man, leaving behind one little fellow who ran smack into the glass, then sat on his bottom deciding whether to cry. Deciding against, he rose, felt around as if ascertaining what was glass and what was not, then passed tentatively through the gap, rejoining his cohort, which began screaming with delight that he had, after all, not been taken alive by the evil chef. It was agreed collectively that the thing to do was drop to all fours en masse and slip beneath another long serving table and crawl along the length of it, then pop up again on the far end and hop, hop, hop in place, ecstatic to find that there still existed, as far as they could tell, no limit whatsoever on how loud they could be or where in the party they could go. A source of maraschinocherries being located, an approach soon developed: stand tugging at the trousers or skirts of those adults milling around the source until several cherries at once were handed down wrapped in a napkin.
I found myself getting teary. Like I used to.
At weddings.
It was all so dear:
New dresses, suits, shoes; shiny ties in the torchlight; a man’s large hand resting proudly upon the slender back of his date; mingled smells of perfume and cologne; memories arising of other weddings one had attended, of one’s own wedding, of weddings one had seen in movie-films; the clacking of plates set down upon tables recently unfolded; a feast spread out on a red-clothed table (the beef, the ham, the turkey; Cornish game hens bundled, browned, sauced; steaming heaps of fried calamari; a color-rich cluster of vegetable dishes; a heap of sliced bread); massive (white, brown, yellow) dollops of custard beckoning from a second, yellow-clothed dessert table; and soon the dancing would begin, the dancers, at first reluctant, made gradually bold by drinks and the sideways smiles of their fellow dancers, this collective feeling arising among them: Well, here we are, folks, together, under the moon, still alive, and though, true enough, we’re ruining our new clothes with spilled drinks and sweat, what the hey, use it or lose it, right, kids?
Goodness, I thought.
I was more Jill “Doll” Blaine than I had been in quite some time.
On the other hand: How fun.
I just felt like pulling that bride and groom aside and hugging them and going, Goshdarnit, you kids really seem to love each other and I wish you all the luck in the world, and I hope, I reallydo hope, that you’ll be (I truly mean this) as happy as me andthis one here,who, though he may not look like much, ha ha, and can sometimes be a real grumpy-puss, I’ll tell you what: heart of gold, and you two should be so lucky, and I hope and pray you will be, too, and wind up just as happy as—
As Lloyd and I.
As Lloyd and I had been. Yikes.
Gosh.
