CHAPTER 33
THE WESTPORT WEDDING
June 25, 1967
Mom’s wedding day was mostly a blur. I had hoped to be her Maid of Honor, but she didn’t pick me. Should I be surprised? No, because she never picks me for anything.
Mom bought me a Pierre Cardin tangerine-and-pink paisley-pleated dress for the wedding with matching tangerine shoes. Mem said I looked beautiful, but I thought I looked like a fruit salad.
At St. Ambrose Church, tears rolled down Mem’s face during the entire ceremony, and I don’t think they were out of happiness.
What I remember most about Mom’s wedding day was the drive down the tree-lined entrance to Longshore Country Club for her reception.
The grand road, flanked on both sides by majestic trees and rolling emerald-green golf hills, caused my heart to pound almost out of my chest. I had never seen such a beautiful entryway to anything in my entire life. I was shivering despite the unairconditioned, sweltering car that Adam gave Mem when he died, and the scorching weather, unusual for June.
Mem thought I was shivering from uncontrollable excitement. No, I wasn’t shivering from excitement—I was shivering from uncontrollable fear: fear of grandiose trees, fear of Westport, fear of not being pretty enough, fear of living without Mem, fear of not fitting in. Fear of Roberto, aka ROB.
Speaking of not fitting in, when Mem pulled up to the front of the club’s entrance, the valet guy gave us and our clunker car the once-over before cringing as he got into the steamy seven-year-old Dodge Dart to park it.
I was the only kid invited to the wedding and reception, so I stuck by Mem, which wasn’t much fun because she was still physically healing from her heart problems and mentally not healing at all from Mere Germaine’s passing.
Halfway through the reception, I met two of Rob’s friends, Tim and Lana O’Connor. Lana snuck me a glass of champagne and offered me a job babysitting for their two-month-old daughter, Kiki.
Mom is 29, but Lana is 22, only eight years older than me. Mom is prettier, but Lana—a blonde beauty in her own right—is more sophisticated and way more charming. Maybe it was the champagne, but I immediately warmed up to her. She dragged me outside, and we shared a Marlboro. She pulled out her wallet to show me photos of Kiki and told me about her life in Westport, which sounded glamorous but lonely. The cigarette wasn’t my first, but the champagne was.
According to Lana, her husband Tim manages a family-owned chain of steak restaurants in New York City, so he works six, sometimes seven, nights a week.
When the reception was over, Mom and Rob jumped into a sleek white limousine for a night at a fancy New York City hotel, followed by a week-long honeymoon in Bermuda.
Before Lana left, she gave me her phone number and made me promise to call her.
I asked Mem to stay until everyone else had gone, embarrassed that someone would see her beat-up car. I was still in a panic over moving to Westport, but excited about getting to know Lana and baby Kiki.
Stay tuned for Chapter 34: The Name Game