He was right. I couldn’t fight it forever. Sooner or later—
But I wouldn’t think about that now. Dad herded us out of the house, his eyes glittering with tears of joy, one hand on his fiancé’s shoulder with the other waving us toward the car in his eagerness to get to the ceremony. Eli and I climbed into the back seat. Dad’s car was large, and the middle seat was like a gulf between us. I wanted to reach across, to show him I cared, but Dad looked into the rear-view mirror with that smile of absolute happiness.
“Let’s go!” he laughed.
“You said it!” Annabelle giggled. “Let’s go and get hitched!”
Eli stared out the window as Dad pulled away from the house. I watched him for a few seconds from under my fringe. He looked handsome in his suit. I could almost trick myself into thinking that he was my prom date, and he and I would end this night with romance. But this wasn’t our day, it was Dad and Annabelle’s, and so I turned away from him and gazed out my side of the window, watching the highway speed by at seventy miles-per-hour.
When we arrived at the ceremony hall—a large function hall built on the outskirts of a hotel—Eli climbed silently from the car. I climbed out, too, and then Dad whisked Annabelle into his arms, laughing all the while, and jogged off toward the entrance, leaving me and Eli alone for a few precious seconds.
“Eli,” I said, and even as I said it I knew I should go along with the performance, should follow Dad, but I needed to know. The question would hound me otherwise.
He turned and raised his eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No,” he said, and stepped forward. He cast a quick glance toward the hall. Dad had set Annabelle down now and was kissing her over and over on the lips, both of them giggling manically like young lovers, and looking the other way, away from us. Eli leaned in and, before I could do anything (or maybe I purposefully didn’t do anything, maybe I wanted it), kissed me on the cheek. It was a quick kiss, but left a warm impression on my skin.
“I’m not mad,” he went on, “because I know you’ll make the right choice.”
Eli
Watching them get married was like playing tug of war within my own chest. On one side of the rope, there was the part of me that couldn’t believe how happy Mom was, knew she deserved it, and was happy for her. She was normally content, but never this euphoric. Her relationship with Andrew had allowed her to reach new heights of happiness. On the other side was the dread and the guilt, knowing that by doing this they were unknowingly changing the relationship of me and Jessica. But then . . . what sort of relationship was there, really? I had told her she’d do the right thing. That seemed like the extent of it.
“I do.”
I didn’t know whether to smile or scream. In the end, I followed Jessica’s lead and smiled widely.
“I do.”
My smile grew wider, so that when Mom looked at me she saw her smiling son, and not a man who had mixed feelings about what had just happened. I turned to Jessica, trying to make eye contact with her. She’d shown me her panties, and, damn, I wanted her again, badly. I wanted her so badly I could’ve taken her in the church. I seriously think if she’d turned to me in that moment and kissed me, I would’ve kissed her back, even with Mom and Andrew there. But of course she didn’t. She was too anxious for that. She was probably glad just to get through the ceremony without incident.
I turned back to the happy couple and returned their smiles. The three friends Mom had invited—all artsy, hippie types with colorful clothes and long hair and a live-free-and-peacefully vibe about them—clapped and sang softly. Jessica clapped, too, but I thought there was something forced in her clapping. It was too eager. It was disproportionate. It was like the clapping of a person who really wants to convince you they’re happy.
The photographer (who up to this point had stayed at the back of the hall) came down the aisle and began snapping pictures of Mom and Andrew as they walked back down the aisle toward the exit. He snapped picture after picture, and Mom’s happiness was like a knife in my chest. I smiled at her, and felt guiltier than I had known because she didn’t know. She didn’t know that the man and woman clapping for her from opposite sides of the aisle (Jessica looking very lonely) had betrayed her.
Finally, the couple was out of the door. The five of us—me, Jessica, and the three hippies—followed them out. They stood next to a Mercedes with the words ‘Bride & Groom’ on the back window. Mom ran over to me as I left the building, bounced over, really. She never seemed to simply move anywhere anymore. Her happiness infused her steps. She jaunted, she pranced, she bounced, she danced, she rushed. She was always moving faster and more purposefully than she had before she knew Andrew.