Some Assembly Required (24 page)

Annette and Sam cried during the ceremony. Birds sang. Jax sat in Amy’s lap in the front row and made farting noises, and clapped.

The sweetest moment in the glorious binge of a reception was when Sam toasted the couple, and everyone cried except me, with my cold stone heart; Sam said Stevo was the closest he’d had to a father while growing up, and that Stevo was the best adoptive dad both he and Clara ever could have had—neither of them needed a birth dad, after they were born, since they had Stevo. No dad could have been funnier, Sam said, or played more on the floor with them, and he’d done such a great job with helping them both with Legos, and homework, and helping them have a great sense of humor, and taking them to Giants games. He said no one in the family would ever think anyone was good enough for Stevo, but finally, in Annette, we were convinced that someone was.

Stevo and Annette’s first dance was to Roberta Flack singing “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” and after they had a moment alone on the floor, five perfect Marin married couples joined in. I felt a little spinstery, but it was hard not to feel great in a tight-fitting rose-colored dress with sequins, and Jax in my arms, in his Cuban-bandleader vest and bow tie, taking it all in. He and I danced twice, to “Hot Stuff” and “On the Street Where You Live.” Then he passed out, so we sat under a redwood tree and I held court, as my queenly En glish mother used to do.

Sam had a great line over the phone today. I had asked that he write up his version of the wedding, and I called to see how it was coming along. He said fine; he was nearly done. I told him to be sure to mention how thin and cute I looked in my vintage rose dress, and there was a pause. Then he said, “Mom, will you mind very much if you are not the main subject of my piece about Stevo’s wedding?”

It was clear my uncle Stevo’s wedding was officially under way when I got a typical call from my mother, just over a week before the wedding.

Mom: “Hi, it’s Worried Mommy.”

Me: “Hi, Mommy, what can I do for you?”

Mom: “I’m worried that you keep putting off getting your measurements at the tuxedo store. Stevo’s wedding is only nine days away. Please don’t let him down. It’s a great honor to be his best man.”

Me: “Oh, this isn’t Worried Mom. This is Guilt-Mongering Mom. I promise I’ll take care of it. You have nothing to worry about.”

She had real reason to be concerned. This was the most important assignment of my life, after fatherhood. That’s how much I love Stevo. But I have zero free time to do anything besides school and Jax.

The day of the wedding rehearsal I made sure to stop by the suit store (whose name we will not mention until the check clears) to make sure that my suit fit. The suit was fine, so I called Uncle to let him know we didn’t have to cancel the wedding on my behalf. From the store I drove down to Mom’s, where people were gathered for the rehearsal. Walking into my mother’s house, the overall mood and fashion were so casual I don’t think a stranger looking in would have had the slightest hint that a wedding was a day away. When I was a kid, I desperately wanted us to be a more normal family— like have china, and dress up more, and have professional photographers take our pictures every Christmas. My mother’s idea of formal was to put our food on plates. Now I see we were great, but kind of odd—and you don’t want to be odd when you’re young.

We all made our way down to the location of the wedding, which was in the huge backyard of a restaurant right around the corner from my Mom’s, and completely bare, with no indications of how it would be decorated and transformed. I tried squinting to imagine what they were going to do with the place. To keep us on our toes, the actual wedding planner was not there to instruct us. Oh, well. Instead, one of Annette’s friends stood in and whipped us into shape. She was actually pretty cool, and saved the day. The instructions were easy, though—only two things to remember. One was the order in which we walked down the aisle, and two was to wait twenty seconds between each person. But at the actual wedding not one of us got it right. We are sort of a funny family that way. Neshama’s husband used to say at family gatherings, “We’re a bum outfit.” Ching ching.

Later, we had a great Puerto Rican takeout banquet at my mother’s: chicken backs, rice, beans, plantains, enough for a hundred instead of the twenty of us who were there. Then, two hours after this party begins, my mom says to everyone enthusiastically, “Okay, time to go home now.” She does this pretty routinely, on holidays and our birthdays. The funny thing is, everyone is always really relieved, although I still find it slightly embarrassing.

The day of the wedding, Amy, Jax and I showed up at my mom’s very early. Her small, quiet house had been transformed into a World War II factory run by women, a fully functioning in-house operation with various stations set up.
Jax and I sat outside in the backyard to kill some time and just be together before the craziness started. Half an hour later, Uncle walked up and said, “It’s getting time to get the suits on,” so we decided to suit up away from everyone else, in the garage that my mom likes to pretend is her pool house. The time we spent was a true best-man-and-groom moment; I will never forget it. I am very honored to have been there for one of my role models in life. I got to get his suit for him from inside the house, and we talked about how great he felt and what a blessed guy he was, and about funny moments we had spent together over the last twenty years. We wanted a snack, and we discussed whether we should go inside, because in the old days you weren’t supposed to see your bride until the wedding. He said, “Oh no, we’re old, it’s our second wedding. It doesn’t matter.” So we walked inside and instantly got yelled at by the women: “STEVO, GET OUT!” Clara got to be one of the women, even though she’s only seven, and was fussed over by the hair-and-makeup friend—she was the happiest, most beautiful girl, in a great lacy white dress and big-girl heels, to walk her dad down the aisle. This just about broke my heart with happiness.

Stevo really wanted to walk to his wedding, and (even though I didn’t) we headed off with Jax in his stroller, so he didn’t drool all over my tux. We walked slowly down the road to the back of the restaurant, to the spot underneath the redwoods, and luxuriously took everything in. It was like being in a mini Muir Woods.

The restaurant had transformed the space into a real summer wedding site, like in the movies, with flowers and ribbons and lanterns, and garlands tying together the redwood trees. When the groomsmen arrived shortly after we got there, the wedding planner directed us to the bar-and-deck area. Back there we drank water, got our big Mafia flower corsages on our suits, and talked. I was reminded what great friends my uncle has, all of them sober like him—and how amazing that he picked me out of all of his friends to be his best man. That’s when my mind went blank with the pressure of trying not to screw up—I was so excited the wedding was starting that right in front of everyone, all one hundred people, I spaced out, and crashed like a drunk into the groomsman ahead of me; luckily, there was no domino effect.

Except for Jax’s birth, it was probably the happiest day of my life.

Everyone—the newlyweds, Amy, Sam, Jax—came to my house after church yesterday, for no particular reason, except that the wedding last Sunday was so lovely that I suggested Stevo and Annette come over and renew their vows. We ate huge amounts of lasagna, salad, chocolate-covered straw berries. Sometimes—like at weddings or funerals—you have to eat vast quantities because you need to be weighted. You need ballast, or you might just float away in the pain or
joy or anxiety. Other times, like today, you just want to shovel it in, for fun, and because you don’t want to have to think too much. Eating is so familiar, and marvelously stupid.

I took care of Jax while Sam and Amy went to the movies, and for the first time when he woke up from his nap, he was not crying to be picked up; instead, he just squawked once from the crib, loudly, like a bitter chicken. When I came into the room, he stood gripping the bars of his portable crib, looking like an inmate about two minutes from calling his prison advocacy rep.

Tomorrow I am flying to Chicago to stay with Doug for a few days and to give a talk at a book festival. Amy has arranged for several relatives and friends to attend. She wants us all to know one another, because we are very important to her and Jax—one big happy family, et cetera. I pretend to think and want this, too, but I secretly hope that instead they will see what a fabulous person I am, and will not want Amy to take Jax away from me. They’ll see what a tragedy it would be to deprive Jax of my influence for more than, say, two weeks at a stretch, and even that might be stretching it. Amy showed me their pictures on Facebook, her friends, cousins, grandma. She adores them: they’re the people she has loved most deeply all her life. I feel slightly competitive with them, which I hate in myself—but we on the West Coast have had
less than three years to convince Amy of our excellence, while they’ve had years and even lifetimes to strut their stuff. Still, I see how ridiculous my jealousy is, and am seriously starting to think I have problems sharing.

Amy left Jax with me for a few hours. He was a hurricane of destruction and good cheer. When he crawls away from a room, he leaves it looking like a frat house. Every single book on low-lying shelves must be flung to the floor. Also—this is new—he seems to be in a workshop on the concept of In and Out, and Off. Everything must get flung over the side of everything else: All the books on any shelves he can reach, Off. All of Clara’s pony figurines in their box, Out. Then they all go back In. Then Out again. It’s dizzying. He’s wired and methodical in his work, like a tiny German crackhead.

A three-day weekend with Doug in Chicago, where I was speaking at the
Tribune
Lit Fest. A weekend of rain and the threat of thunderstorms, and then sun flickered through and there was blue sky again and the day turned warm, and then black clouds returned. Doug and I spent hours at Millennium Park, where musicians were playing every kind of music around every leafy, brilliantly landscaped corner. Most nights of the summer, there are outdoor concerts in the park, and you walk beneath the gigantic, fantastic silver mirrored
“Bean,” like a spaceship hovering ten feet off the ground, to see yourself in crazy fun-house reflection and perspective from all sides and fields of it. There are fountains for kids and babies to splash and cool off in. There was a Matisse exhibition at the Art Institute, where I copied down the notes on one painting, which had the phrase “radical becoming.” That stopped me in my tracks. They were the words of the philosopher Henri Bergson, “reality as a state of radical becoming, constant flux, graspable only by intuition.” Rattly rides on the El, and theater on bus rides filled with Anna Deavere Smith characters. Sunday morning we took the El to Doug’s church, which is much like St. Andrew in terms of intergenerational and multiethnic peace and justice passion and mission outreach, with a black associate pastor, a rousing choir, and a sermon identifying where Jesus’ message butts up against white privilege, male and straight privilege. I realized that Sam would love this place. Ack! Ack! Please, God, if You love me, shoot me now.

And a couple of hours later, I experienced a true-blue epiphany in Doug’s guest room, while packing my bags. I had the full-body conviction—after twenty months of feeling terrorized by the very thought—that it would be okay if Amy and Jax, or Amy and Sam and Jax, moved to Chicago. It would be okay. I would be okay. It would be fantastic for Sam to live in this great city, and maybe go to the Art Institute here. Jax, Doug, and I could splash around in the fountains with Chicago jazz playing behind us, and string quartets. Sure,
maybe I would cry at first and go into withdrawal, and have a nervous breakdown; but then I would come through.

Well, that was fun while it lasted.

Now I must think of new ways to persuade Amy to want to live in California. Must help her get some great friends. Or here’s a good idea: get her relatives and best Chicago friends to move here. They can all live with me. And I’ll help them get great jobs, including the grandmother; she can work at one of the local Catholic thrift shops.

Still, a knot inside me is releasing ever so slightly. I continue to feel powerless and doomed, but in a slightly more relaxed way.

Sam, Amy, and Jax were here today for hamburgers and inedible hippie fries. It was a warm afternoon, the three of them sweet and lovely together. Amy was at her most easy going, and I felt that we were working out a seriously touching mother-in-law-and-daughter-in-law friendship that succeeds, except when one of us is at her most impossible. She and Sam seem relaxed and bonded in parenting him today. We took turns playing with him, reading board books, handing him off to one another like a relay team.

We had cherries and apricots. There were white butterflies in the garden.

How could I have been okay imagining the three of them living in Chicago? Right now, I feel exactly the opposite. They belong here. Sam could finish school, and then I could set him up in an inventor’s dream laboratory. Amy could keep being a stay-at-home mom. So what if it would be hijacking their hero’s journeys, and retard all three of them? So what if it would be like the psychic equivalent of Chinese foot-binding? Sure, I might feel a tiny bit bad about that, but not as bad as I would feel if they moved across the country.

Jax is jibber-jabbering away, making word salad—language and communication put through a baby Cuisinart of babble.

His imitation of us really puts us in our place, knocks us down a peg or two: he hears this stuff that we think is so important, that we talk about all day, but he’s giving back what he hears, and spewing it back at us, and it is gobble dy gook.

He’s so earnest about talking to us now, fully participating, saying: “I’m in the stream of life, too. Everything you can do with your mouths, I can do, too.” I wonder if I was still okay when I was his age. If so, it wouldn’t have been for long. I suspect that by age three, I had already been kidnapped by my parents’ diseased marriage and returned, without anyone’s
knowing I’d been taken, seemingly intact, ready for a lifetime of polite anxiety and overachievement.