The Shortest Distance Between Two Women (37 page)

“You are going into business with Susie Dell?”

“You know, it’s okay to drink something besides lemonade at a picnic, darling.” Janet grabs Emma’s cup of coffee and ignores the question. “Have some wine or a beer, for God’s sake. Live. Lighten up. It is summer and we are at a picnic.”

Something is going on all around her. Emma can feel it as if her hand is hovering above a hot stove. Erika cannot seem to stop trying to get someone on the phone. Marty and Robert are slinking around as if they’ve just run over someone’s pet cat. Uncle Mikey keeps going on about the final item on the auction list that will be a record breaker and apparently a newsmaker. Now Janet is talking in code about some kind of business with Susie Dell and it looks as if someone else is taking over the far corner of the park, because a catering service is busy setting up tables and right in the middle of their little extravaganza it looks as if there is a champagne fountain.

“Why do I always feel as if I am the last to know every single thing in the whole world?” she asks Janet.

“What do you mean?” Janet sounds a bit startled.

“You and Susie Dell, and my mother, and her horde of lovers, and Stephie’s home life. Have I really been unconscious most of my life?”

“Oh hell, honey,” Janet fires back. “We all feel that way. Get over it, for crying out loud. People are entitled to have their secrets.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one watching the parade.”

“Honey, have you been sniffing the penis holder?”

“I wish.”

“That’s your problem, Emma. Stop wishing. Start
doing
.”

“Well, just slap me,” Emma says, a little stunned, but not shocked, because lately everyone keeps telling her the same thing.

Janet looks away suddenly because she realizes that Susie Dell is now snorting on purpose to get Uncle Mikey’s attention.

“Look at her,” Janet says, barking out a laugh. “She is hilarious. Has she no pride?”

“Forget her, Janet, she’s suddenly in love.”

“She thinks you are terrific, by the way,” Janet shares. “She also thinks you should quit working for me and start a gardening business.”

This is the end of their conversation because suddenly there is only a pile of antique coloring books, a case of expired beer, and three pairs of ratty tennis shoes to auction off and the entire crowd has raced to the bathroom, run back and filled up their glasses or
popped open a new beer. Everyone is eagerly poised for the grand finale and long-awaited last auction item. The tension in the air could open a beer by itself.

Susie Dell pulls herself away from her ring-finger-viewing location long enough to grab not just three, but six beers, and brings them back to the chairs where she sits and looks as if she is an eight-year-old girl waiting for the clowns in a parade to throw candy in her direction.

Emma pops open her first beer. She looks at Susie Dell and Janet as if she has never seen them before. And then Marty walks onto the stage dressed in an absolutely stunning bone-colored two-piece linen pants suit. Robert follows her. He’s dressed in an almost-identical-colored linen suit that appears to be made out of the exact same material as Marty’s.

“Jesus,” Emma manages to say as Janet reaches over to hastily steady the beer that is about to topple out of her hands. “What in the holy hell is going on?”

“Listen,” Susie Dell says as Janet reaches over to anchor
her
beer as well.

Uncle Mikey suddenly whips off the large black cape-like jacket he has been wearing all afternoon to expose a tuxedo.

Susie Dell swoons, which is almost as loud as a snort, and Uncle Mikey winks at her.

Emma stands up.

Susie Dell stands up.

Janet keeps a hand on each one of their elbows.

“Please pay attention,” Uncle Mikey admonishes. “We are about to have the final auction item, followed up by an event that will go down in Gilford family history as one of the most remarkable days, events and experiences we have ever witnessed and participated in during one of these already fun-filled events. You are
about to attend the marriage of Marty Gilford and Robert Dell and some of you are going to be lucky enough to be in the wedding party,” and here Uncle Mikey hesitates like the fine auctioneer that he is, “that is, if your bid is high enough …”

Marty and Robert Dell are auctioning off positions in the wedding party.

Marty and Robert Dell are auctioning off post-wedding toast positions.

Marty and Robert Dell are auctioning off the right to escort them to the lovely, but semi-informal, reception that will be held immediately following their wedding.

Marty and Robert Dell are auctioning off the right to drive them to their honeymoon hotel.

Emma turns to Susie Dell at the exact same moment that Susie Dell turns to her and they both drop their beer and whisper, “Our parents are marrying each other
right now!”
as the bidding for becoming part of the wedding begins.

And three seconds after that, the town gossip’s hat blows off and lands in the beer cooler as she runs to get a closer look at the bridal couple; the car carrying the local newspaper reporter and photographer who were obviously tipped off by someone about the nuptials screeches to a halt next to the pavilion; and Joy finally falls off the table she has been sitting on for the past five hours.

Then Emma walks over to sniff the penis holder lest she add one more regret to a list she is considering auctioning off at next year’s reunion.

Marty has her hands extended so that her fingertips are touching Robert’s fingertips. That arm’s length may as well be
non-existent because Marty is looking at Robert in a way that says everything.

It says “yes” not in a sweet, lovely way but in a screaming “Are you out of your mind, of course I take this man, look at him” way.

It says
I am so happy that I could be glowing in the dark and will be for real once the reception begins
.

It says
Right this moment we are the only two people on the face of the earth
.

It says
I have added a good ten years to my life by falling in love with this man
.

It says
I have waited a very long time for this moment
.

And finally it says
We fooled them all
.

Emma takes a quick look to her right to see who has been poking her and there is Susie Dell, her almost-new stepsister, now looking as if she is the one in the trance. Next to her is Debra, then Erika, then some woman Emma has never seen before in her entire life, a man wearing two baseball hats and holding a plastic bag, and three little girls who are clutching makeshift bouquets of leafy tree branches.

While Marty looks as if she is desperately trying not to throw Robert on the ground and kiss him everywhere, Emma sees the remainder of the makeshift auction wedding party. It’s brothers-in-law Rick, Kevin and Jeff and then the nephews Bo and Riley, a stunned but happy-looking Tyler, and next to him is the woman who bought the penis holder who is apparently having a banner day, the town gossip who is sobbing into a towel, and then the most absolutely adorable grandmother, ninety if she is a day, who cannot stop saying so everyone can hear her, “I’ve always wanted to be a bridesmaid.”

Emma turns to her and wonders how in the world she even got up and walked under the pavilion eaves so she could be in the wedding party. She was only two sips into her beer when the wedding auction started and then the world became a bit blurry.

It was Erika, she quickly remembers, who ran from the bathroom when she heard what was happening and immediately told her siblings and Susie Dell that they absolutely had to be in the wedding party.

“We’ll pool our money,” she said breathlessly. “I think they take checks. We have to do this. We have to.”

“Calm down,” Susie Dell said before she fell apart herself, gently putting her hand on Erika’s arm. “Let’s do it. We’ll bid on spots and then cover each other if someone doesn’t have enough money.”

Susie Dell looked up, keenly surveyed the area to see how many of Marty’s offspring were close by, beckoned them with her auction-waving hand, and this is when Emma realized that she was a bit weak in the knees.

Meanwhile Janet was grabbing all the grandkids.

In the end the Gilford-Dell clan pooled every cent they had on them and won spots in the bridal party for fifteen hundred dollars, which immediately set a new auction record. The other bridal attendants, who
really
wanted to be in the wedding, kicked in a combined five hundred dollars. And within thirty-three minutes the wedding of Martha Grace Olsson Gilford and Robert Haymond Dell was ready to blast off.

Sadly, at the last minute Joy was not able to be in the bridal party. She had rolled under the picnic table that she had fallen off of and was sleeping like a baby.

Emma would always remember the wedding, what happened before it and after it, as a kind of lovely ringing in her ears. None of her sisters seemed to think that what was happening was wrong. It might be different, yes, but wrong, no. It might be so nontraditional as to not even be considered legal, which it totally was, but it was still lovely. It made the fanfare and expense of every other wedding they had ever attended, or been a part of, seem embarrassing. The kids were having an absolute blast and were thrilled to be a part of Grandma’s wedding and Susie Dell was so seriously excited to be getting brothers and sisters that she could not stop kissing everyone and asked if she could have Thanksgiving dinner at her house.

Thanksgiving dinner not at Marty’s?

This first question flushes through Emma as if she is prepping for a surgical procedure. In the last sixty minutes just about everything that could be called a preexisting condition has changed.

The number of her fathers.

The number of her sisters.

The number of her unmarried mothers.

The number of her assumptions about what her mother’s life must be like.