Sister of the Bride (11 page)

Barbara giggled. “And I suppose they'll bring out your presents in the big black umbrella they always use for showers.”

“And eat rich, gooey cake and talk about their diets,” added Rosemary. “Good old Amys.”

“Rosemary, promise me you'll never be an Amy when you get married,” said Barbara.

“I promise,” said Rosemary solemnly.

Barbara had an uncomfortable thought. “What will I do if Tootie really is there?”

“If Tootie is willing to see you in front of all the
Amys, you will know it is true love.” Rosemary was obviously amused.

Barbara groaned.

“What's wrong with Tootie?” asked Rosemary. “I think he's nice. A little gangly, but the type that is sure to mature into something. If you'd take the trouble to really look at Tootie you'd see that he's a good-looking boy.”

“Nothing is wrong with Tootie,” answered Barbara. “He just likes me more than I like him. He's like a big puppy, only he needs to be cheered up all the time.”

“Ah,” said Rosemary knowingly. “You don't like him because he makes you feel guilty. You feel you should like him more than you do.”

Barbara considered this. “You know, I believe you're right,” she said at last. How wise Rosemary had become since she had roomed with a psychology major.

“Every girl has a Tootie Bodger in her life,” said Rosemary, “and I suppose every boy has a girl who likes him more than he likes her.”

Barbara thought guiltily of Bill Cunningham and then felt even more guilty for feeling guilty. Bill liked her. He didn't give any other girl rides home on his Vespa. Instantly this thought was answered
by another. No other girl fed Bill so well.

The girls were silent as they climbed the steps to the Bodgers' house, Barbara phrasing the sentence she would utter when the door opened, Rosemary preparing to be surprised.

“Is Tootie home?” Barbara asked dutifully of Mrs. Bodger when she opened the door. She sincerely hoped he was not.

“Why, it's Barbara MacLane! And Rosemary!” Mrs. Bodger successfully feigned surprise. “Come on in, girls.”

“Surprise! Surprise!” chorused the Amys. “Here comes the bride,” someone sang.

“Why—it's the Amys!” Rosemary feigned even greater surprise. “I had no idea—Barbara, why didn't you tell me?”

“I was sworn to secrecy,” said Barbara, admiring her sister's performance as she faced the room full of her mother's friends. Although the sisters had always lumped the Amys together, there was actually a variety of women in the room—the Amy who wore leather sandals and wove her own skirts, another who was active in the League of Women Voters, the mother whose calm was never disturbed by her six children, a mother who wanted to write but could not find time, an Amy
whose rough hands and deep tan were the result of hours spent in her hillside garden.

“And there's Aunt Josie! And Gramma!” exclaimed Rosemary, surprised, radiant, and bewildered all at once. “Mother, how ever did you manage not to breathe a word of this?”

As Mrs. Bodger took the girls' coats Barbara observed that her mother had been right. Tootie was nowhere in sight. She felt her aunt's tape measure eye slide over her, making her wish she had not eaten so many brownies and pecan crispies. Quickly sitting down on the floor with some of the younger Amys, she counted the house and prepared to enjoy herself. Twenty-eight, not counting Rosemary. A lot of loot. She leaned back and waited for Mrs. Bodger to drag out the big black-cotton umbrella loaded with gifts.

“What a beautiful ring!” cried one of the Amys, and Rosemary, in answer to the clamor, held out her left hand as if she dripped jewels from every fingertip.

“Oh no, Mrs. Baylis, let me sit on the floor,” said Rosemary to one of the Amys who was offering her the seat of honor after everyone had admired her engagement ring. She sank gracefully to the floor near her grandmother's feet. She smiled around
the room at the members of the club and managed not to look expectant. Barbara admired her for this ability. If Barbara were the bride, she would probably be looking down the hall watching for the presents to be brought on. Mrs. Bodger sat as composed as if there were to be no presents.

“Rosemary, tell us about your young man,” someone was saying, when the conversation was interrupted by the sound of an alarm clock ringing nearby.

“That is for you, Rosemary,” said Mrs. Bodger. “Find the clock, and you will find your first present.”

What a typically Amy idea, thought Barbara, controlling her desire to giggle.

All the Amys laughed and Rosemary right along with them. She was a picture of pretty confusion as she stood up and looked in the direction of the sound. She located the clock and the gift behind some books in the bookcase and pulled them out. “Oh—how do I turn this thing off?” She examined the chattering clock in her hand.

“Push the thing on top to the right,” directed the clock's owner.

The clock silenced, Rosemary sat down on the floor to open the gift. She read the card, exclaimed
over the wrapping, couldn't bear to untie the bow—it was so beautiful—accepted a pair of scissors from her hostess, and finally lifted the lid from the box and laid back the tissue paper, revealing a set of linen dish towels printed with herbs, fruits, and vegetables. Through all this, her ring hovered and sparkled and twinkled like Tinker Bell. Never, it seemed to Barbara, had a left hand been so conspicuous.

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Lessing,” said Rosemary. “They are lovely. And how did you ever know I don't have a single dish towel?” She had lifted each towel out of the box to admire it and then laid them back to pass around the room for all the Amys to examine. By the time she had done this a second alarm clock jangled, this time from a bedroom.

“Another?” You would think Rosemary had not expected a second gift.

When the second clock was located and silenced, Rosemary returned to the room with a large box, wrapped in paper printed with wedding cakes. “I can't imagine what could be in such a big package,” she said, and once more read the card. “Why, it's from Mrs. Carretta!”

Barbara began to wonder how her sister was
going to manage to be surprised twenty-eight times in one evening. This gift turned out to be a big cookie jar in the shape of a fat and smiling chef. It was the sort of thing Rosemary did not like, but she removed the head with her left hand and peeked inside, exclaiming, “It's going to keep me busy filling this up for Greg. Thank you, Mrs. Carretta.” Anyone would think Rosemary had been hoping someone would give her a cookie jar exactly like this.

Clocks continued to buzz, clatter, and jangle at regular intervals. The pile of gifts and ticking clocks beside Rosemary grew. “If this keeps up, she'll get the big head before the wedding is over,” Gramma was heard to remark to the Amy sitting next to her. Rosemary pretended not to hear and continued to be surprised and delighted. Barbara genuinely admired her sister's performance, all the more so because her own face was beginning to feel a little stiff from smiling and exclaiming and admiring so much. Pumpkin-colored towels, a casserole, a set of canisters, a wooden salad bowl, two aprons…

One alarm clock produced two gifts. The first was a recipe file, containing the favorite recipe of each Amy. “Why, this one isn't for me,” said
Rosemary, as she picked up the second gift and read the card, “To Nancy Bodger, my Secret Pal. She is really quite a gal.”

“For me?” exclaimed Mrs. Bodger, taking the gift and examining the card. “I can't imagine who it's from. I don't recognize the printing.”

Barbara could hardly keep from giggling. The Amys were always rhyming
gal
and
pal
. She sought her sister's eye to exchange a private look that would say, How like the Amys! But the smiling eyes of Rosemary refused to be caught. She was much too busy looking at the recipe file she had just received. “I can't wait to try all these recipes,” she was saying. Barbara felt lonely and left out. She smothered a yawn.

“Thank you, Secret Pal, whoever you are,” said Mrs. Bodger when she had opened her gift, a pair of sequin-trimmed pot holders. “Just what I've always wanted.”

As Rosemary's pile of gifts and ticking clocks continued to grow, Barbara found it more and more difficult to smile. A cookbook, more linen dish towels, a set of pink bathroom towels with elaborate hand-crocheted borders from Gramma, who said, “I do like to see pretty colors in a bathroom,” and Barbara's candlesticks, looking
impractical among the practical gifts. “I love them!” cried Rosemary, when she had undone the olive green paper, and Barbara found it difficult to return her smile. Her legs were beginning to feel cramped from sitting on the floor. Her left foot was asleep.

Barbara was embarrassed when Aunt Josie patted her hand and said loud enough for all to hear, “You just wait. Your turn is coming.” Oh, don't mind me, Barbara thought, I'm just the sister of the bride.

The Amys all laughed affectionately, and Barbara smiled with stiff lips. I'm jealous, she thought miserably. Green-eyed over a lot of dish towels. She would feel better, she knew, once she and Rosemary were home behind the closed door of their room, where they could break down with laughter over the Amys. Sequin-studded pot holders from a Secret Pal! How typical and how delicious!

Still the alarm clocks rang and still Rosemary sustained her performance. Her engagement ring sparkled over the growing pile of gifts. Not once did her delight and enthusiasm flag. Barbara shifted her legs from one side to the other, because her right foot was beginning to go to sleep. She
struggled to hide her letdown feeling by sitting up straight and trying to look vivacious. The most admired gift of all was Mrs. MacLane's set of stainless-steel mixing bowls. Every one of the Amys, it seemed, had always wanted a set of such bowls. If the recipe called for melted shortening, it could be melted right in the bowl, eliminating one pan to be washed. This confirmed Barbara's feelings that they were all bound to their kitchen stoves. Every last one of them. There was no poetry in their souls. Just recipes.

The last gift, which Rosemary located in the kitchen in the oven, was anonymous. It turned out to be a rolling pin, and Rosemary laughed as heartily at this joke, symbol of a henpecking wife, as if she were a genuine Amy. Barbara managed a laugh, too, taking her cue from Rosemary. Humoring the hostess in her little joke was the polite thing to do. Her real laughter would be shared with Rosemary at home.

The show was over, the club broke up into groups, and Mrs. Bodger produced cookies, coffee, and ice cream molded in the shape of wedding bells. As Barbara had anticipated, several Amys protested, “There goes my diet!” The ice cream had been molded so hard to make it hold its shape
that it was impossible to cut it with a spoon, so the Amys chatted while they chipped away at their wedding bells, waiting for them to soften. Barbara found herself listening to stray bits of conversation that flew about the room. She learned that Mrs. Ellowitz's daughter, who had gone East to college, felt that her mother used too many dashes in her letters. The Amys thought this was extremely funny and agreed that it must be difficult to write to a daughter who had become a literary critic during her first year in college. She learned that Mrs. Baylis's son had had a difficult time selecting a birthday gift for his girl—nothing his mother suggested was right—but he had finally—thank goodness!—settled on artificial pearls. This was interesting to Barbara, who had not realized that Jim Baylis and Betsy, whom she knew at school, had reached the gift-exchanging stage.

For a moment Barbara wished Bill Cunningham's mother was an Amy. She might have learned something interesting about him—whom he was taking to his graduation party, for example—but of course Mrs. Cunningham would never waste her time with a club like the Amys. She was too busy with her career and too tired from her commute to the city.

Barbara found herself being drawn into one of
the groups of mothers, who were obviously being kind because she looked left out.

“Won't Rosemary make a lovely bride?” remarked Mrs. Tolfree to Barbara, but glancing across the room at Rosemary.

“Yes.” Barbara could not think of anything to add. Rosemary, surrounded by admiring mothers, looked pretty and radiant, just the way a bride should look. She used the hand that bore her engagement ring as self-consciously as if she were wearing wet nail polish.

“Just lovely,” agreed the others. Barbara wondered why she felt so tired. She wanted the party to end, and she was sure no one would say she would make a lovely maid of honor tonight.

“Brides of today are certainly different from those of our generation,” remarked Mrs. Tolfree. “I can't think of a single girl, when I was in college, who went on to school after marrying.”

“They marry so young nowadays,” said another Amy, and it seemed to Barbara she sounded a little sad, as if marrying young was something to be sorry about.

Barbara felt it was time for her to contribute to the conversation, so she said earnestly, “Rosemary feels that if she didn't go on to school she might
not use her mind. Rosemary feels it is important for women to use their minds.”

She spoke into one of those sudden silences that fall in any crowd and was quite unprepared for the reaction to her remark. Gramma was first to speak. “Oh, for pity's sake!” she exclaimed, as if exasperated with such nonsense.

Barbara was embarrassed by the laughter of the entire roomful of Amys. Hoping at least for silent support, she glanced at Rosemary and saw that she, too, was embarrassed. Me and my big mouth, thought Barbara miserably. She would never hear the last of this. Once the Amys got hold of something to laugh at they never let it drop. They could keep one wretched little joke alive for months, even years. Now they would be asking her if she was using her mind every time they saw her. She could hear them already. Why hello, Barbara. Still using your mind?