Stanley spends more time in the teachers’ cafeteria than anyone. When he sees me he sits with me, drinks coffee, smokes cigarettes and delivers monologues on everything.
Like most teachers he has five classes but his speech therapy students are often absent because of the shame of stammering and trying to make themselves understood with cleft palates. Stanley gives them inspirational speeches and even though he tells them they’re as good as anyone else they don’t believe him. Some are in my regular English classes and they write compositions saying it’s all right for Mr. Garber to talk, he’s a nice guy and all, but he doesn’t know what it’s like to walk up to a girl and ask her to dance when you can’t get the first word out of your mouth. Oh, yeah, it’s all right for Mr. Garber to help their stammer with singing in his class but what good is that when you go to the dance?
In the summer of 1961 Alberta wanted to be married at Grace Episcopal Church in Brooklyn Heights. I refused. I told her I’d rather be married in City Hall than in some pale imitation of the One, Holy, Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Episcopalians irritated me. Why couldn’t they stop the damned nonsense? They’re up there with their statues and crosses and holy water and even confession, so why don’t they call Rome and tell them they want to return?
Alberta said, All right, all right, and we went to the Municipal Building in Manhattan. It wasn’t required but we had Brian McPhillips as best man and his wife, Joyce, as bridesmaid. Our ceremony was delayed because of a quarrel between the couple ahead of us. She said to him, You goin’ be married to me with that green umbrella on you arm? He said that was his umbrella and he wasn’t going to leave it out in this office to be stolen. She nodded toward us and told him, These people ain’t gonna steal you goddam green umbrella, excuse the language on my wedding day. He said he wasn’t accusin’ nobody of nothin’ but goddam he paid a lot for that umbrella on Chambers Street from a guy that steals them and he wasn’t givin’ it up for nobody. She told him, Well, then, marry you damn umbrella, and she picked up her bag and walked out. He told her if she walked out now that was the end and she turned to the four of us and the woman behind the desk and the official coming out of the small wedding chapel and said, The end? What you talkin’ about, man? We be livin’ together three years an’ you tell me this is the end? You don’t tell me this is the end. I tell you and I’m tellin’ you that umbrella ain’t goin’ to my weddin’ an’ if you insist there’s a certain party in South Carolina, a certain ex-wife, that would like to know where you at an’ I be glad to tell her if you know what I mean, certain party lookin’ for alimony an’ child support. So take you choice, Byron, me in that little room with the man an’ no umbrella or you back in South Carolina with you umbrella standin’ before a judge tellin’ you, Pay up, Byron, support you wife an’ child.
The official at the door of the wedding chapel asked if they were ready. Byron asked me if I was the one getting married today and would I mind holding his umbrella because he could see that I was like him, going nowhere but into that little room. End of the road, man, end of the road. I wished him good luck but he shook his head and said, Damn, why we all whupped like this?
In a few minutes they were back to sign papers, the bride smiling, Byron grim. We all wished them good luck again and followed the official into the room. He smiled and said, Are we all atthembled?
Brian looked at me, raised his eyebrows.
The official said, Do you promith to love, honor, cherith? and I struggled to keep myself from laughing. How could I survive this wedding conducted by a man with such a powerful lisp? I’d have to think of some way of controlling myself. That’s it. The umbrella on my arm. Oh, God, I’ll fall apart. I’m caught between the lisp and the umbrella and I can’t laugh. Alberta would kill me for laughing at our own wedding. You’re allowed to weep with joy but you must never laugh and here I am made helpless by this man with the lisp, promithing thith and that, first man ever in New York to be married with a green umbrella on his arm, solemn thought that kept me from laughing, and the ceremony was over, the ring on Alberta’s finger, groom and bride kissing and being congratulated by Brian and Joyce till the door opened and there was Byron. Man, you got my umbrella? You did that for me? Kep’ it right here? Wanna have a drink? Celebrate?
Alberta signaled no to me with a little shake of her head.
I told Byron I was sorry. We were meeting friends who were giving us a party.
You lucky, man, you have friends. Me an’ Selma goin’ out to have a sangwidge an’ go to a movie. I don’t mind. Movie keeps her quiet, ha ha ha. Thanks for watchin’ my umbrella.
Byron and Selma left and I fell against the wall, laughing. Alberta tried to keep a bit of dignity in the occasion but she gave way when she saw Brian and Joyce laughing, too. I tried to tell them how the thought of the green umbrella saved me from laughing over the lisp but the more I tried to talk the more helpless I became till we were clutching each other going down in the elevator and wiping our eyes outside in the August sun.
It was a short walk to Diamond Dan O’Rourke’s Saloon for drinks and sandwiches with friends, Frank Schwake and his wife, Jean, and Jim Collins and his new wife, Sheila Malone. After that there was to be a party out in Queens given by Brian and Joyce who would drive Alberta and me in their Volkswagen.
Schwake bought me a drink. So did Collins and Brian. The bartender bought us a round and I bought him a drink and left him a big tip. He laughed and said I should get married every day. I bought drinks for Schwake and Collins and Brian and they all wanted to buy me one again. Joyce whispered to Brian and I knew she was worried about the drinking. Alberta told me to slow down. She understood it was my wedding day but it was early and I should have respect for her and the guests at the reception later. I told her we were married barely five minutes and she was already telling me what to do. Of course I had respect for her and the guests. That’s all I ever had was respect and I was weary of having respect. I told her back off and there was such a state of tension Collins and Brian intervened. Brian said it was his job, that’s what best men are for. Collins said he knew me longer than Brian but Brian said, No, you don’t. I went to college with him. Collins said he didn’t know that. McCourt, how come you never told me you went to college with McPhillips? I told him I never saw a need to tell the world who I went to college with and for some reason that made us all laugh. The bartender said it was nice to see people happy on their wedding day and we laughed even harder thinking of lisps and green umbrellas and Alberta telling me have respect for her and the guests. Of course I had respect for her on our wedding day till I went to the toilet and started thinking of how she rejected me for another man and I was ready to go out and confront her till I slipped on the slimy floor of the toilet in Diamond Dan O’Rourke’s and banged my head so hard against the big urinal I had a headache that made me forget the rejection. Alberta wanted to know why the back of my jacket was damp and when I told her there was a leak in the men’s room she didn’t believe me. You fell, didn’t you? No, I didn’t fall. There was a leak. She wouldn’t believe me, told me I was drinking too much and that so irritated me I was ready to walk out and live with a ballerina in a loft in Greenwich Village till Brian said, Oh, come on, don’t be an ass, it’s Alberta’s wedding day, too.
Before going out to Queens we had to pick up a wedding cake at Schrafft’s on West Fifty-seventh Street. Joyce said she’d drive because Brian and I had been too enthusiastic with the celebrations at Diamond Dan’s while she and Alberta were saving themselves for the party that night. She stopped opposite Schrafft’s and said no when Brian offered to get the cake but he insisted and dodged the traffic. Joyce shook her head and said he was going to get killed. Alberta told me go help him but Joyce shook her head again and said that would only make things worse. Brian came out of Schrafft’s holding a big cake box against his chest and once more dodged cars till a taxi sideswiped him slightly at the street’s dividing line and the box fell to the ground. Joyce put her forehead against the steering wheel. Oh, God, she said, and I said I was going to help my best man, Brian. No, no, Alberta said, I’ll go. I told her this was man’s work, that I wouldn’t risk her life with these mad taxis on Fifty-seventh Street and I went to help Brian who was on his hands protecting the wrecked cake from the traffic zooming by him right and left. I knelt with him, tore a cardboard flap from the box, and we shoveled the cake back in with bits hanging here and there. The little bride and groom figures looked sad but we wiped them off and stuck them back on the cake, not the top, because we didn’t know where the top was anymore, but somewhere in the cake where we could push them in for the security. Joyce and Alberta called to us from the car that we’d better get off the street before the police came or we were killed and they were tired of waiting anyway, hurry up. When we got into the car Joyce told Brian pass the cake back to Alberta for safekeeping but he turned stubborn and said no, after all his troubles he’d hold on to it till we were at the apartment, and he did even if he had bits of cream and little green and yellow decorations all over his lap and his suit in general.
The wives treated us coolly the rest of the way in the car, talking only to each other and making comments on the Irish and how you can’t trust them with a simple task like crossing a street with a wedding cake, how these Irish couldn’t have one or two drinks and be content till the reception, oh, no, they had to talk and treat each other to rounds till they’re in such a condition you couldn’t send them to the grocery for a quart of milk.
Look at him, Joyce said, and when I saw Brian dozing away with his chin on his chest I nodded off while the wives went on with their lamentation about the Irish in general and this day in particular, Alberta saying, Everyone warned me that the Irish are great to go out with but never marry them. I would have defended my race and told her how her Yankee ancestors had nothing to be proud of the way they treated the Irish with those signs everywhere that said, No Irish Need Apply, except that I was weary from the strain of being married by a man with a lisp while I carried Byron’s green umbrella and my heavy responsibility as groom and host at Diamond Dan O’Rourke’s. If I hadn’t slumped with the weariness I would have reminded her how her ancestors hanged women right and left for being witches, how they were a dirty-minded lot, rolling their eyes in shock and horror at the mention of sex, but having a grand time between their thighs listening in court to hysterical Puritan maidens claiming the devil appeared in various forms and frolicked with them in the woods and how they became so devoted to him all decency went out the window. I would have told Alberta how the Irish never carried on like that. In the whole history of Ireland only one witch was hanged and she was probably English and deserved it. And, just to clinch it, I would have told her the first witch to be hanged in New England was Irish and they did it to her because she said her prayers in Latin and wouldn’t stop.
Instead of saying all this I fell asleep till Alberta shook me and told me we were there. Joyce insisted on taking the cake from Brian. She didn’t want him to fall forward on the stairs and crush the cake entirely and she still had hopes of reconstructing it so that we’d have some semblance of a cake and people could sing, The bride cuts the cake.
People arrived and there was eating, drinking, dancing and misunderstandings between all the couples, married and unmarried. Frank Schwake wouldn’t talk to his wife, Jean. Jim Collins quarreled in a corner with his wife, Sheila. There was still a coolness between Alberta and me and between Brian and Joyce. Other couples were affected and there were islands of tension all over the apartment. The night would have been ruined except for the way we all united against an outside danger.
One of Alberta’s friends, a German named Dietrich, drove off in his Volkswagen to replenish the beer supply and when he returned there was trouble with the owner of a Buick he had backed into. Someone told me about the trouble outside and since I was the bridegroom it was my duty to make peace. The Buick man was a giant and poking his fist into the face of Alberta’s friend. When I stepped between them he let loose with his big punch. His arm swung around the back of my head, into Dietrich’s eye and we all fell to the ground. We wrestled a bit, one with another, no one a bit particular, till Schwake, Collins and McPhillips separated us with the Buick man threatening to tear Dietrich’s head from his shoulders. When we dragged the German inside I discovered my trouser knee was ripped, the kneecap bleeding. The knuckles of my right hand bled, too, from being scraped along the ground.
Upstairs Alberta started to cry, telling me I was ruining the whole night. My blood boiled a bit and I told her I was only trying to be a peacemaker and it wasn’t my fault if I was knocked down by that baboon next door. Besides, I was helping her German friend and she should be grateful.
The argument would have continued if Joyce hadn’t stepped in to call everyone to the table for the cutting of the cake. When she slipped off the covering cloth Brian laughed and kissed her for being such a genius of an artist you’d never know this cake was scooped off the street a short time ago. The little bride and groom were secure though his head wobbled and fell and I told Joyce, Uneasy lies the groom that wears a head. Everyone sang, The bride cuts the cake, the groom cuts the cake, and Alberta looked mollified even though we couldn’t cut proper slices and the cake had to be dished out in chunks.
Joyce said she was making coffee and Alberta said that would be nice but Brian said we should have one more drink to toast the newlyweds and I agreed and Alberta got so angry she ripped the wedding ring from her finger and threw it out the window though she remembered suddenly that was her grandmother’s wedding ring from early in the century and now it was out the window, God knows where in Queens and what was she going to do, it was all my fault, and her great mistake for marrying me. Brian said we’d have to find that ring. We didn’t have a flashlight but we were able to light up the night with matches and cigarette lighters as we crawled across the lawn below Brian’s window till Dietrich shouted he had the ring and everyone forgave him for stirring up trouble with the big Buick man. Alberta refused to replace the ring on her finger. She’d keep it in her purse till she was sure of this marriage. She and I took a taxi with Jim Collins and Sheila. They would drop us at our apartment in Brooklyn and continue into Manhattan. Sheila wasn’t talking to Jim and Alberta wasn’t talking to me but as we swung into State Street I grabbed her and told her, I’m going to consummate this marriage tonight.
She said, Oh, consummate my ass, and I said, That’ll do.
The taxi stopped and I climbed from the backseat I had shared with Sheila and Alberta. Jim got out of the seat by the driver and came to where I stood on the sidewalk. He intended to say good night and get back in with Sheila but Alberta pulled the door shut and the taxi drove away.
Christ Almighty, said Collins, this is your goddam wedding night, McCourt. Where is your bride? Where is mine?
We climbed the stairs to my apartment, found a six-pack of Schlitz in the refrigerator, sat on the couch, the two of us, and watched television Indians drop from the bullets of John Wayne.