Here is my brother, the groom, in his shredded wedding shirt, years later, his irrepressible eyes, all the tousled, nervous parts of him, leaning against a pillar in my reception hall.
And here are his wedding guests, shimmering beside mine. The anisette of that upstate retreat mixes with the mason-jarred gardenias of this inn. Between my guests I glimpse Sara Something’s mustached cousins. My brother’s guests are dressed for outside, flip-flops and shorts. My guests are for cold weather. Stockinged, suited, coated. Them denimed, faded, hasty hair. Us pressed and dry-cleaned, tamped with pins and lotions. For a moment, the reality of the day shivers and welcomes all possibilities. Sara Something’s mother accepts a mushroom cap from the groom’s first boss.
The guests from my brother’s failed heroin wedding will ask the guests from mine to dance. The polite staccato introduction to a minuet. Sara Something’s aunt in a sundress veers through a line of partygoers, clasped to my stepfather. He bends her into a dip, her mouth open, gleeful.
That party then and this one, now. Two sets of invited guests. Close enough that the years of divorces, bad investments, marriages, and other betrayals glimmer and turn friendly, manageable, as if any struggle we’ve ever had with a loved one can collapse if the right song plays.
My brother beams at the dancing. But it is my sister, Simone, who leans in to whisper, “I’m sorry. I won’t use your life again.”
“I forgive you.”
The guests from her wedding fade. Something in this room—me, I suppose—reality, returns to its rigid state.
“Is there anything you need?” a waiter says. Is he from that time or this? Is his question literal or figurative?
“Anything like what?” I say.
He gestures to the area below my left elbow.
I’m holding a giant knife, flanked by only my wedding guests who gape at me like I owe them violence. Vanilla almond with lemon basil. The groom looks as if he’s watching me take too long to hurl myself above a lake on a rope swing. He yearns to follow. If only I’d jump!
“Cut,” he says.
I puncture the top layer of fondant and bear down into the tiers. The flash of cameras and phones. Everyone loves cake so much they can’t stop clapping.
My mother says, “Cut!”
The guests yell, “Cut!”