“I think I do, dear,” the clerk said.
They bought their license for a dollar, arranged for a pastor to marry them on Wednesday, April 2, because Christina would not marry on April Fool’s Day, paid five dollars in advance for a corsage, then drove back home. On Wednesday, Christina skipped school. She’d write a note tomorrow about having a twenty-four-hour virus. All the girls were coming down with it. She wore her sheer white blouse, full black taffeta skirt, heels and her best jewelry—a small gold cross around her neck, which Yaya and Papou had given her for her sixteenth birthday, and an ankle bracelet from Jack. This was, after all, her wedding day. After the brief ceremony conducted by one of the marrying parsons, the witnesses threw rice. She kept twisting the slim gold band from Goldblatt Jewelers on her finger, a ring she wouldn’t be able to wear in public.
Jack wanted to have sex before they started out for home, so they stopped at Boyd’s motel and spent nine dollars on a room. But she was too scared to let go and enjoy it even though he used a rubber. After, they stopped at a diner for lunch. She ordered something called “Wedding Cake” for dessert, a white layer cake with lemon filling. Actually, it was pretty good.
That night she pressed her wedding corsage in her scrapbook, hid her ring under the false bottom of her jewelry box and cried herself to sleep.
A week later she got her period.
Elizabeth Daily Post
NO HOME LIFE FOR FLUET
MARCH 26—Joseph O. Fluet, the government’s chief airline crash investigator for this area, hasn’t been able to spend much time at his home in Great Neck, N.Y. According to his wife, he’s been there for only two hours in the last month. Fluet is staying at the Elizabeth Carteret hotel. The lonesome Mrs. Fluet says she’s weaving a rug to pass the time.
27
Miri
On most days Irene picked up the afternoon mail, but she was away for two weeks in Miami Beach with Ben Sapphire. Rusty tried to get her to promise to call home every night so she’d know Irene was okay, but Irene laughed at the idea. “Don’t worry, darling, I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
“I’ll look after her like she’s a queen,” Ben promised.
“I’ll send postcards,” Irene sang, looking smart in her new travel suit, and blowing them kisses as she and Ben left for Newark’s Penn Station, where they’d board the Silver Meteor to Miami.
“Postcards,” Rusty mumbled as the car pulled away.
So on this late-March day Miri was the one to pick up the mail. She’d already walked Mason and Fred to Edison Lanes, where a bum came out of nowhere, pulling on Mason’s sleeve, frightening Miri. He was filthy and he reeked of alcohol.
“Get off me,” Mason told him.
“Come on, son. You’re a big shot now, a hero,” the bum said. “People must be throwing money at you. How about something for your dear old dad?”
She could see the anger in Mason’s face, his jaw tightening, his teeth clenched. “I said, get off me!”
The bum looked at Miri. “Who’s this? Your girlfriend?”
“Don’t touch her,” Mason said, shielding Miri with his body.
Fred barked.
“Well, well…it’s Fred, is it?” He tried to pet the dog but Fred growled. Miri had never heard Fred growl.
“If you don’t get out of here I’m calling the police,” Mason said.
“I am the police, son.”
“You were the police, but not anymore. And stop calling me son.”
“Jacky always gives me a fiver.”
“Yeah, to get rid of you.”
“You want to get rid of me, son? Give me some change.”
“Let’s go,” Mason said, grabbing Miri’s hand. He led her inside but turned back to the bum once and called, “You better be gone when I come out. You hear? You better be gone!”
He wouldn’t let Miri leave until the coast was clear. “I’m sorry you had to see that drunken excuse of a father,” he told her.
That was his father? The father who’d chased him with an ax?
Miri was still reeling when she dropped Fred at Mrs. Stein’s house. She walked home looking over her shoulder, making sure the bum who was Mason’s father wasn’t following her. It must be terrible having a father like him, Miri thought, someone you couldn’t trust, someone so unpredictable. Better to have no father or a father in California you never had to see.