But a seismic shift had struck the Dwyer-Halloran nuptials when it was announced that Their Royal Majesties King George VI and Queen Elizabeth would be visiting the World’s Fair on the same day as the wedding—a date that the Dwyers had chosen almost ten months earlier. The royal visit and the official functions attached to it immediately siphoned off the most prominent names on the guest list, including the mayor himself. And once La Guardia sent his regrets, lesser lights in the city’s political firmament lined up to undo the Pleased to attend they had checked on the cream-colored response cards.
Rosemary’s father had been chewing glass for months about another botched wedding, and how there must be a curse on the family, but if there were curses in this world, Rosemary knew that none of them had ever, or would ever, land on Peggy. She had always led a charmed life. All the royal visit did was peel away the bounders and the party hacks from the guest list—people that Peggy had never wanted to invite in the first place. She wouldn’t be able to pick the deputy mayor out of a lineup, so why would she want him at her wedding? No, Rosemary knew how this would all play out: Peggy and her perfect husband would recover from the not-quite-perfect wedding, and have a boy and then another and another, and with each one her father would busy himself with plans that would save the boys from ever having to think about where life would take them. Do as Papa says and all will be right with the world. One of them in the mayor’s office, another in the governor’s mansion, and the third in Washington. Peggy’s job would be to shepherd them along, keep their faces clean and their hair combed straight, and make sure that her husband didn’t interfere with the comet-force dreams of Dennis Dwyer.
ROSEMARY ARRIVED AT her parents’ house on Friday evening for the final run-through before the wedding. She should have ignored her mother’s backhanded compliment, delivered as the plainspoken truth—Peggy is better at making choices; you’re better at making decisions—and come over early on Saturday when they could all start the day fresh. Despite what her mother had said on the telephone, she knew the details would not get sorted over dinner. Sure enough, her father was in no mood to ruin his meal with wedding talk and as soon as the plates were cleared he was into the Scotch and then it was time to put the girls to bed. When Rosemary came downstairs, her father was hazy around the eyes and her mother was brooding over her teacup. And Peggy? When she finally returned from the World’s Fair, where she was performing as an Aquagal in a water-ballet revue with a cast of hundreds, she insisted that she had already made plans for one last night out with her best girlfriends—all of which led to another dustup with her mother about how Peggy wasn’t taking the wedding seriously: Why was she splashing around in a pool when she should have been thinking about the seating chart?
Rosemary slept badly in her old bedroom, thanks to the narrow mattress and Kate kicking in her sleep and the baby up every two hours. She came downstairs convinced that the day was going to be a wash, but wouldn’t you know it, by midmorning they had settled on the hymns, double-checked the centerpieces with the florist, triple-checked the order with the liquor store, and compiled the checklist for the photographer (wedding party, bride & groom, b&g w/ her parents, b&g w/ his, etc.). Peggy had already been fitted for her wedding gown, and the dress now hung upstairs in the closet of Rosemary’s old room. Even Martin had been brought into the fold. Rosemary had assumed that he would approach the wedding with equal parts complaint and dread, but when he was conscripted into fielding a band for the reception—his first stint as a bandleader—he took to the project with gusto.
It was the seating chart that bedeviled them. Every time it seemed settled, the next day’s mail would scatter the artfully arranged tables like some mad game of fifty-two pickup. It was bad enough that the head count continued to drip-drip-drip as putative guests scored invitations to one of the official receptions for the royal visit, but the Dwyers also had to contend with less majestic upheavals: the Baltimore aunts had stopped speaking to the Boston aunts, the Teamsters’ chief was feuding with the head of the pipefitters’ union, a city councilman facing indictment had to be moved from the center of the room to a more distant orbit.
Rosemary scanned her parents’ dining-room table, crowded with numbered paper circles and strips the size of fortune-cookie predictions bearing the name of each guest at the reception. It resembled a tabletop battlefield where generals maneuvered armored divisions with a croupier’s rake. Peggy and her mother sat at one end, the latest guest list in front of them, while Rosemary and her father considered ways to group the unassigned second cousins, maiden aunts, party faithful, and midlevel cronies. They worked their way down the list, ticking through the names.
“What about the Hartigans?” Rosemary said.
“Oh, they canceled last week,” her mother said.
This news snapped her father to attention. “Do you mean to tell me that given the choice between seeing our daughter get married and standing in a crowd with a million idiots hoping for a five-second looky-look at the crowned heads of Europe, they chose the goddamn king and queen? John Hartigan can go to hell for all I care.” Her father stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray that resembled a lead-crystal brick. What kind of message did it send if John Hartigan—who owed half of his wrecking firm’s city contracts to the good graces of Dennis Dwyer—thought he could get away with skipping the nuptials? “This whole thing is looking like one big mistake.”
“Daddy, please do not refer to my wedding as a mistake.”
“Your wedding is not a mistake. The timing of your wedding is a mistake.” He worked his jaw as if he were grinding a piece of hard candy between his molars, a habit he’d had as long as Rosemary could remember; another of those familiar signs of home, as timeless as the floral couch with its stiff plastic cover.
“I don’t know why you’re getting mad at me,” Peggy said. “Tim and I wanted a short engagement. But for some reason, you insisted I had to be a June bride—”
“I never insisted on anything. I haven’t made a single goddamn decision since this whole fiasco got started!”
“So first it’s a mistake and now it’s a fiasco?” Peggy flopped the list onto the table among the slips of paper, the squat black telephone, the Waterford sugar bowl, the ashtrays. “How can anyone think in here?” She moved closer to the window, fanning herself with one hand. The eyelet curtains hung limp from their rods.
“Sit down, young lady.”
“I won’t,” she said. “And besides, I’m late as it is. I’ve got two shows today and I should have left an hour ago.”
“That’s all we need,” her father said. “The bride swimming down the aisle in her bathing suit.”
Peggy narrowed her eyes. Whatever she was about to say, Rosemary knew it would be another mess for her to clean up. “Peggy,” she intervened. “We really need to finish this.”