Chapter Two
The next day, Tania stood at the front window of her apartment smoking a joint. She wore a red, long-sleeve wiggle dress. A limousine pulled up to her building. She put on a coat and went downstairs.
The driver opened the rear door of the limo, and Tania climbed into the back seat.
“Hello, Mommy. You look gorgeous.”
Tania leaned in to kiss her mother on the cheek.
“Gorgeous, my ass.”
Angela Wildman grabbed a clump of her hair and shoved it in Tania’s face.
“It’s supposed to be ash blonde not shit brown, and this outfit makes me look like Tammy Faye Bakker.”
Tania opened her mouth to speak; her mother cut her off.
“And don’t tell me it doesn’t.”
Tania exhaled into her seat; the driver got behind the wheel. Angela handed Tania a piece of paper.
“Here’s where we’re going.”
“Mother, he knows where we’re going; he was sent here to take us there.”
Tania and her mother sat in silence for the fifteen minutes it took to get from Minneapolis to Edina. The limo pulled up to St. Michael’s church, and the driver got out. He opened Tania’s door. Angela wrapped her mink coat around herself, reached across Tania, and grabbed the limo driver’s hand. Tania pulled in her feet, and the driver hauled Angela out of the car.
Inside the church vestibule, Tania’s sister, Maria, was chatting with Angela’s sister, Nell, and her daughter, Bernadette.
“Speak of the devil; here’s Tania now,” said Maria.
She gave Tania a cardboard hug and air-kissed their mother. Maria pointed to other relatives in the vestibule.
“You remember our family, don’t you, Tania?”
A string quartet began Bach’s “Air on the G String.” Two groomsmen approached Tania and Angela to usher them to their seats. Tania introduced herself to her escort.
“I’m the bride’s mother’s sister.”
“I know; I’m her son.”
“You must be the oldest?”
“No, I’m the youngest.”
“You’re awfully big for an eleven-year-old,” said Tania.
“I’m fifteen,” said her nephew.
He deposited Tania in the front pew next to her mother on the left side of the church. Maria joined them. Aunt Nell, Bernadette, Bernadette’s husband, Bob, and her bachelor brother, Gene, took the second pew. Aunt Sadie, her husband, Preacher, who rarely spoke and wasn’t a preacher, and their thirty-four-year-old son, Johnny, who “wasn’t right in the head,” filled out the third.
“WHAT STINKS?” asked Aunt Nell.
She turned to the third pew.
“JOHNNY, DID YOU JUST FART? YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FART IN CHURCH; YOU HAVE TO SIT IN YOUR OWN PEW.”
“Fart, fart, fart, fart, fart,” said Johnny.
Maria turned and put her index finger to her lips, indicating that Aunt Nell and Johnny should shut the fuck up. A trumpet sounded the opening bars of the “Prince of Denmark March.” Johnny covered his ears and rocked his head. The bridesmaids and maid of honor came down the aisle in puffed-sleeve taffeta dresses with gigantic bows plastered to their backsides. Each girl wore a different Crayola color—magenta, pine green, royal blue, violet, and turquoise. Ostrich feather hair clips completed their outfits. The guests rose as Maria’s daughter, Joan, was escorted down the aisle by her father, Jim. A floral headband and explosion of tulle was wrapped around her sky-high hair; her dress had a dropped fitted waistline and balloon sleeves. Jim handed his daughter over to Ted, the groom. The guests sat down, and the priest began his routine.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of God.”
Aunt Nell turned to Bernadette.
“WHAT DID HE SAY? I CAN’T HEAR A GODDAMN THING.”
Bernadette mouthed, “Turn up your hearing aid.”
“WHAT?”
Bernadette tapped her own ear.
“Turn up your hearing aid.”
“CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?” shouted Nell.
Following the rice toss, the wedding party boarded a trolley for the reception, and the guests dispersed. Tania and her mother stood on the church steps. Their limo driver was nowhere to be found.
“I’d better find Maria,” said Tania.
A maintenance man swept up the rice and locked the church doors.
Tania searched both ends of the block then climbed the stairs.
“I can’t find anybody; they all left on the trolley.”
Snowflakes dotted Angela’s mink.
A station wagon pulled up to the curb, and the driver rolled down her window. She shouted to the pair.
“Need a ride to the reception?”
“Yes, we do,” responded Tania.
She and her mother came down the stairs and got in the stranger’s car.
The reception was held in the ballroom of Glen Oaks Country Club. Tania and her relatives clustered together in the receiving line.
“Where’s your husband, Tania?” asked Aunt Nell.
“He’s not here: We’re not married anymore.”
“I guess your mother forgot to tell me, just like she forgot to tell me when she got a nose job.”
Nell thought for a moment.
“Was he the Jew? I remember hearing you married a Jew.”
“No, Aunt Nell, he wasn’t the Jew. That was somebody else.”
“Was the Jew the lawyer?”
“No, that was somebody else.”
She whispered to Tania.
“Let me give you a little tip, honey. All a man needs to be happy is a pussy and a pork roast.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Tania.
After going through the receiving line, Tania and Bernadette picked up some wine and hors d’oeuvres. They sat down on a sofa in the club’s second-floor lobby.
“I wish my father was alive,” said Tania.
“He sure was crazy about you,” said Bernadette.
“He was? He never told me that.”
Tania got teary and wiped her eyes with a cocktail napkin.
“He probably did; I just wasn’t listening.”
Bernadette took a gulp of wine.
“I think my brother’s gay.”
“Do you think Gene’s gay or is he gay but doesn’t know it or gay but doesn’t want to show it?”
“I think he’s a forty-five-year-old guy who lives with his mother, hasn’t been on a date in twenty years, and wants to ride every roller coaster in the U. S. of A.”
“But he works in the automotive department at Sears!”
“Can you think of a better place to meet men?”
A trumpet sounded.
Tania and Bernadette left the lobby and discovered Johnny in the hallway. He was holding a tray of hors d’oeuvres and scarfing down each one on the platter. He wiped his mouth with his tie and took a drink from a lipstick-stained champagne glass someone had left on a credenza.
Bernadette and Tania hustled Johnny to the table in the ballroom where the family was to sit. Bernadette’s husband, Bob, said, “I think I let Angela have a little too much to drink.”
Tania sat down and peered around the centerpiece. Her mother’s head was bobbing, and she was muttering.
“Left out in the cold like an old cur.”
“Oh, shit,” said Tania.
A waiter came by and filled Tania’s water glass.
“I think my mother needs a cup of coffee.”
Tania pointed across the table.
“She’s the one with her eyes closed.”
Aunt Nell took a look at Angela and added her two cents.
“THAT WOMAN COULD NEVER HOLD HER LIQUOR.”
The waiter brought Tania’s mother the coffee.
“Where’s the goddamn cream?” asked Angela.
Bernadette handed her a small pitcher. Angela poured its entire contents into the coffee and stirred the overflowing mixture with her finger. She lifted her head and gazed across the table at Tania.
“What the hell are you looking at?”
Tania pushed a basket of rolls in her mother’s direction.
“Why don’t you have some bread?”
Angela flicked the basket with the back of her hand; it flew off the table.
“I don’t want any goddamn bread; you know I’m on a diet.”
Johnny got down on the floor, picked up a roll, and gobbled it up. Crumbs cascaded out the sides of his mouth and onto the front of his shirt. He crawled around, gathering the rest of the rolls into the breadbasket and offered them to guests at nearby tables. Maria rushed over and grabbed the basket from his hand.
“Sit down or you won’t get any cake.”
“Cake, cake, cake, cake.”
“Be quiet, Johnny.”
“CAKE, CAKE, CAKE.”
“You want cake, Johnny? Well, you won’t get any unless you shut up.”
Maria caught sight of her mother, whose head was two inches from the tablecloth. Angela looked up and addressed her.
“You left me out in the cold . . . like I was a good-for-nothing dog.”
Maria scanned the room to see who was looking; Angela went on.
“You think your shit doesn’t stink, but I know better. I used to wipe your ass.”
“Tania, you’ve got to get her out of here before she ruins everything,” said Maria. “I’m calling a cab.”
Bernadette and Tania got up, grabbed Angela by the armpits, and lifted her out of the chair. Tania pulled her toward the exit; Bernadette pushed her from behind. Guests averted their eyes and drew in their chairs to let them pass. Angela started spitting up; Tania grabbed a napkin from a woman’s lap.
“Excuse me, I need that,” said the guest.
“I need it more,” said Tania.
The cousins maneuvered Angela into the nearest ladies’ room and dragged her to a sink. Tania turned her back and paced; Bernadette held her aunt’s head. Tania heard her mother gagging and then saw her vomiting in a mirror’s reflection. Bernadette wiped her aunt’s mouth with a paper towel. Angela moaned. The door to the ladies’ room opened, and Maria walked in carrying Angela’s purse and mink.
“The cab will be here any minute.”
She handed Tania sixty dollars.
“This ought to cover it.”
Tania took the money; Maria turned away.
She said, “I could tell she wasn’t feeling well in church. The heat probably got to her. She never could take it. You remember, Tania. She always said, ‘I just can’t take the heat.’ ”
Heat? What heat? It’s February, for chrissake, thought Tania.
Maria picked up a can of Aqua Net from a counter and sprayed her hair.
She said, “Maybe it was something she ate? One of the hors d’oeuvres. She could be allergic to shrimp; lots of people are allergic to shrimp. What do you think, Tania?”
“I don’t think it was the shrimp.”
“Well, the cab will be here any minute.”
She gave Tania a quick kiss.
“Thanks, kid.”
Tania and Bernadette swept the snow from a bench at the entrance to the clubhouse and sat Angela down on a stack of Glen Oaks newsletters. Tania went inside to get a “just in case” garbage bag for the trip back to Minneapolis. The cab pulled up as she came out the door. The cousins loaded Angela into the back seat, and Bernadette spread the plastic bag over her aunt’s lap. Tania went around to the other side of the cab and paused.
“Thanks for everything, Bernadette. I couldn’t have made it through this without you.”
“Bye, Tania. It was great seeing ya.”
