THE WEDDING HAD BEEN PLANNED for June. Then for August. Now it was the tenth of September and at last Nieman Gluuk and Stella Light had set a date they wouldn’t break.
“We are mailing the invitations today,” Stella told Nora Jane. They were having tea on the patio of the Harwoods’ house on the beach. It was Friday morning. Stella was missing a faculty meeting about grants for the graduate students, but the dean had let her go. No one was expecting much of Stella or Nieman this year. The world will always welcome lovers. This is especially true on the Berkeley campus, where many people have thought themselves almost out of the emotional field. “We have set a deadline. Every invitation in the mail before we sleep. Are you sure you want to have it here? This close to the baby coming?”
The women were sitting on wicker chairs with a small table between them. The table held cheese and crackers and wild red straw berries and small almond wafers Stella had brought for a gift. “I told the department head I had to have a week and he said, Take two weeks.”Stella shook her head. “I think we’ll just go to the Baja and lie in the sun and read. I have never imagined myself being married. It seems like such an odd, old rite of passage. Are you sure you want to have it here?”
“Freddy Harwood would die if he couldn’t have this wedding here. He is fantastically excited about it. So are the girls. Did you bring a list?”
Stella fished it out of her jacket pocket and handed it over. “It’s seventy names. This one is my cousin in Oklahoma City. The one who lost a child in the bombing. They have two foster children they’re trying to adopt. So I think they will bring them. Two little girls they found in a Catholic home down on the border. One’s eleven and the other’s seven. My mother’s been very involved in it. She specializes in children with learning disorders. They had to round up all sorts of counseling. They were kids no one else wanted to adopt. Anyway, they are coming to the wedding.”
“Maybe they should be bridesmaids. Tammili and Lydia would love some help.” Nora Jane stretched her legs out in front of her. She was eight months’ pregnant. Sometimes she forgot about it for hours, then the baby would start moving and remind her.
“I should have thought of that. Of course they can be in the wedding. But how will we get them dresses? Don’t the dresses all have to match?”
“That’s easy. Bridesmaids’ dresses are big business. I’ll have a shop here send them things or they can send measurements and we’ll have dresses waiting for them. Where are they going to stay?”
“I made reservations at the Intercontinental.”
“Let your cousin’s family stay with us. The guest house is just sitting there. Four little bridesmaids. This is starting to sound like a wedding.”
“I’ll call Jennifer tonight. Momma said they were nice little girls. She said it’s working out a lot better than anyone thought it would. It’s been a godsend to me. It kept Momma off my back while Nieman and I decided what to do.”
That was Friday morning. By Monday afternoon a bridal shop in San Francisco and one in Oklahoma City were deep in consultation on the subject of four pink bridesmaids’ dresses that must be ready by October the sixteenth. The four little girls had been introduced on a conference call and Nora Jane Harwood and Jennifer Williams had gone past discussing dresses and hats and shoes and flowers and were into the real stuff. “You just went down there and got them?” Nora Jane asked. It was the fourth time they had talked.
“We had to live. When I saw them, my heart almost burst. They aren’t a thing alike. Annie looks like she belongs in Minnesota. We still haven’t figured out how she ended up in Potrero. But Gabriela is a little Mexican Madonna. Her ambition is to be a singer and get rich. She is very interested in getting rich.”
“Can you adopt them?”
“We don’t know yet. It’s pretty certain we can have Annie but there aren’t any papers on Gabriela. We’re just living from day to day. I think if anyone tried to take them Allen would run away to Canada with them. Actually, the people here seem to think it will be all right. We’re trying not to worry about it.”
“This wedding is going to be amazing. It keeps growing. Freddy and Nieman found a string quartet and it’s been in the papers twice. ‘The famous iconoclastic bachelor Nieman Gluuk,’ that’s what they’re calling Nieman.”
“What are they calling Stella?”
“’Brilliant, reclusive scientist’ was in the Chronicle. Freddy’s teasing them to death about it.”
“We will be there,” Jennifer said. “I don’t think either of them have ever been to a big wedding.”
It was several weeks before eleven-year-old Annie started worrying about going to California to the wedding. Once she started, the worry fed upon itself. She began lying on her bed in the afternoon pretending to be asleep. Also, she started eating everything in sight.
“Don’t you want to jump on the trampoline?” seven-year-old Gabriela asked her. “Don’t you want to do anything?” She had known something was wrong with Annie for several days but this was the first time she had felt like doing anything about it. It was nice living in Oklahoma City, but Gabriela was getting worn out with all the things she had to do to keep it together. Keeping Jennifer happy, letting Allen teach her to play the piano, trying to learn the arithmetic at school, talking Annie into taking her pills. The doctor had given Annie some pills that were supposed to keep her from getting mad at people, but she was afraid they would poison her and Gabriela had to help talk her into swallowing them. Sometimes Annie was afraid she would choke to death swallowing them and sometimes she just thought they might be poison. Gabriela would get on one side of Annie and Jennifer would get on the other side and Gabriela would say, “Would I let you get poisoned? Jennifer got them at a drugstore, Annie. She knows the guy who sold them to her. You swallow food all the time and it doesn’t choke you, does it? It would take a lot of pills to make a French fry” Then Gabriela would take a piece of cereal or bread and demonstrate swallowing it and in the end they would usually get Annie to take the pill.
“You better let us keep them in our room,” Gabriela advised Jennifer and Allen. “That way she’ll know nobody’s trying to slip her something.”
“I’ll take her to the drugstore to get the prescription filled,” Allen suggested.
“Yeah, well, I knew a guy who worked in a place where they made pills.” Annie was backed into a corner of the living room sofa. They were all around her. “He said they threw in rat shit when they got in a bad mood. He said you wouldn’t believe what all was in pills you buy at the store.”
Allen and Jennifer looked at each other. Both of them sort of half believed it. It was not the first revelation these girls from the lost half-world of the Mexican border had brought them.
Allen sat down on the floor. “Well, look at it like this,” he began. “We have a system of trust in our culture. We all eat and drink things all day long that other people have handled and we have to believe that our inspectors, the people who go into factories where pills are made, are doing a good job of seeing that the things they sell us are clean and made out of the right things, not out of rat feces. Most of the people who make things for us do a good job of it, just like we would if we worked there. I’ll find out where the pills come from, Annie. I’ll find out where the factory is and I’ll call them and see if they’re doing a good job before you take any more of them.”
“That’s right,” Gabriela added. “I guess you got to think of it as getting lucky. If your luck’s good, you don’t get poisoned or raped or anything. If your luck runs out, you’re fucked.” She looked at Jennifer. She was trying not to say fuck around Jennifer. Jennifer smiled and went to her and touched her shoulder.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Say anything you want to say. So, Annie, what should we do? Should we trust the doctor and this druggist and take these pills or not? I don’t want you to be scared every day when you have to take them.”
“She’ll take them.” Gabriela went to her friend. “You’re going to take them, aren’t you? Look at me, Annie. Say something about it.”
“I’m taking her to the drugstore to see where they come from,” Allen said. “We’ll find out where they’re made. Maybe we can call the company and check on them.”
“Okay. Give it here.” They handed Annie a pill and watched as she swallowed it.
“Okay,” Gabriela said. “Now let’s talk some more about what we’re going to get for our birthdays.”
The next afternoon Allen took Annie to the drugstore and they talked to the druggist about where the pills were made and looked them up in the PDR and the druggist let Annie watch him put them in the bottle.
“You can keep them in your room,” Allen said. “In a safe place. Every morning when you take one you can write it down in a note-book.” They found the stationery department and picked out a pink notebook with a pencil attached. When they got home Annie put the pills and the notebook on a shelf in her closet.
“Tell us that again,” she asked Allen that night. “That part about everybody trusts everybody else not to poison them.”
“You think it’s wise to let her keep them in her room?” Jennifer asked later.
“She needs to learn to write down dates. It will serve several purposes. I don’t want her taking that stuff for long, Jennifer. The warnings in the PDR are pretty scary. It’s just a form of Dexedrine. Why did Doctor Cole think she needed it?”
“Just to calm her down until we can get her settled in school. He says she’s plenty bright. He just wants to make sure she doesn’t get further behind and get the idea that she’s dumb. Thank God for the sisters. She’s going to stay in the fifth grade no matter what we have to do.”
“She liked the notebook. I don’t think she’s had much of her own. Did you see the way she arranged her things in the room? She touches my heart, Jennifer. I can’t believe how much I am attached to her already.”
“Gabriela wants a savings account. She asked me to take her to my bank. Where did she find out about banks?”
“I’d be afraid to ask.” They shook their heads in disbelief at what they had brought into their lives. Neither of them said Adelaide and neither of them had to. She was there, alive in their hearts and in every moment. World without end, amen.
On top of everything else she had to do, when Annie started acting funny about going to the wedding, Gabriela decided it was up to her to fix it. “I’ll talk to her,” she told Jennifer. “I can always get her to say what’s wrong with her.”
“How do you do it?” Jennifer asked.
“I just keep after her until she tells me. She’s never afraid of anything except stuff that isn’t true. She gets ideas in her head. She may be worrying about the airplane. She didn’t like flying here too much but we didn’t want to tell you.”
That afternoon after school Gabriela cornered Annie in their room while she was changing clothes and started in on her. ’Are you afraid of going on the airplane?” she asked. “You think it’s going to crash or something?”
“I think they won’t bring us back. I think they’ll leave us there. They’ll take us back to the home.”
“No they won’t. Jennifer says we’re the reason she and Allen are alive.”
“It’s costing too much money. They have to pay the doctor and they have to buy me those pills. They cost twenty-four dollars. When I went to the drugstore with Allen to meet that guy that bottles them up I saw the bill. Twenty-four dollars for that little bottle that wasn’t even full. They have to buy us all that food. They’re going to get tired of that. They’ll send us back.”
Gabriela moved over and began to stroke Annie’s hair. “They don’t want to get rid of us. Would they buy us all these clothes if they weren’t going to keep us? Not to mention that saddle Allen got you. Listen, you were so cute in that play last week. I bet Allen and Jennifer think you’re the cutest girl they could ever get in the world. Come on, don’t hide your face.” Annie was starting to smile, thinking about the applause at her school play. Gabriela pressed her advantage. “If you’ll stop worrying about going on the plane, I’ll tell you what we’ll do.”
“What?”
“We won’t be taking any chances. Wait a minute.” Gabriela walked over to a painted chest at the foot of her bed and opened it and took out the brown cape. She arranged the cowl. ‘All right. Here’s what we’ll do. We will take this cape with us. This cape has been very lucky for us. The day we got it Sister Maria Rebecca told me about Allen and Jennifer coming to meet me. And it made you remember your lines last week when I made you sleep with it, didn’t it? Admit it. Say something, Annie.”
“Where do you think it came from?”
“I think some old monk had it in Nevada or somewhere, or else it’s real old. Lucky stuff doesn’t have to come from somewhere. You know when something’s lucky for you.”
“Okay. It’s lucky for us.”
“Then we’ll take it to California to keep our luck going. Those girls we talked to on the phone are waiting for us. They’re rich as they can be. They’re going to make their dad take us to an amusement park. This is going to be a vacation, Annie. I never went on a vacation in my life. I want to go on one.”
“All right,” Annie said. “I’ll go to this wedding. If I get to carry the cape.”
“You can carry it. But if you lose it, I’ll kick your butt. Do you get that?”
“I’d like to see you try.” Annie stood up and grabbed her smaller friend around the waist and wrestled her to the bed. They fought for a minute, then they started laughing. The cape had gotten tangled around their legs. Besides, it was hard to fight without making any noise and it scared Jennifer to death if they punched each other. They had almost given up having fights, which was a shame because they were beautifully matched, despite the difference in their sizes. Annie was a wrestler, who liked to get holds on people and then sit on them or twist their arms. Gabriela was a stomach puncher and a shin kicker and a biter. She was also a good spitter and had won several battles at the home by spitting on people at crucial points in a fight.
The bridal shop in San Francisco mailed the dresses to the bridal shop in Oklahoma City. They were dresses by Helen Morley, who had also designed the dress Stella was going to wear. Stella’s dress was elegant and simple, thick white silk with embroidery down the back and capped sleeves and a high neck.
The dresses for the girls were made of pale pink lace over satin slips. There were tiers of lace ten inches wide going down to the ankles and high-waisted bodices and full soft sleeves. When the owner of the shop in Oklahoma City pulled the first dress from the box a sigh went around the room. “Well,” she said. “California always has to outdo everybody.”
“They have all those Asian ideas,” a saleslady comforted her. “Plus Hollywood.”
“Yeah,” said a third. “What do you expect?” Then the ladies recovered from their moment of jealousy and one ran off to comb the neighborhood for shoes. Another ran out to a rival store for gloves. A third began to work on the veils, which had been crushed in the mail.
At five that afternoon Jennifer and Annie and Gabriela arrived at the store and were ushered into a huge dressing room with golden chairs and a golden sofa. The girls took off their school clothes and were dressed in the pink lace costumes.
“I wasn’t expecting this,” Annie said. “How much does this dress cost?”
“This is for the Queen of Sheba,” Gabriela agreed. “How are we going to wear this on a sandy beach?”
“Shit,” Annie added, turning to see the back in the three-way mirror. “We look like a bunch of hibiscus flowers by the well.”
“Fucking merde.” Gabriela went to stand by her taller friend in the mirror. Even then the dresses looked perfect.
“Fucking-A,” Annie agreed.
“Well, let’s try on the gloves and shoes,” the owner said. “We sent Roberta all over town to find shoes. We think white patent sandals since it’s by the water.”
The saleslady named Roberta began to open the shoeboxes that were stacked in the corner. “Every size they could possibly wear,” she said proudly. “I looked all over town. We aren’t going to be outdone by anyone in California. They will arrive with everything they need.” Except mouthwash, she was thinking, and then chastised herself for being mean. Everyone in Oklahoma City knew the Williamses’ story.
Annie sat down on the sofa and allowed Roberta to try the shoes on one by one. “You might consider shaving her legs,” Roberta said. “I started shaving mine in the sixth grade.”
Annie bent over and looked at the elegant little sandals on her feet. She examined the small, light-colored hairs showing along her bones. She pursed her lips.
“Her legs are perfect,” Jennifer was saying. “She doesn’t need to shave her legs.”
“She’s right,” Annie muttered. “That looks like shit. I know how to shave it off. I seen a girl in the home doing it. You get me a razor and a bar of soap and I’ll take care of that.”
“Do you like the shoes? Is that pair comfortable? Get up and walk around in them.”
Annie got up from the couch and began to parade around in front of the mirrors. What would it be like, being in a wedding? The priest would be fixing the wine. The altar boys would be swinging incense. Everyone would be looking at her. She stood very still, lost in thought. Gabriela moved across the room and took her arm. “Don’t start getting moody,” she said in a whisper. “Ask them if we’re just going to wear these dresses, or if we’re going to get to keep them.”
“I need the shoes with the heels on them,” she said in a louder voice to Jennifer. “If I wear those little ones I’ll look like a midget.”
It was seven that night when Jennifer and the girls got home from the store. They had gloves and hats and shoes in an assortment of sacks and boxes. The dresses had been left to be altered and hemmed. “So now do you think they would get rid of you?” Gabriela asked Annie,when they were alone in their room getting ready for bed. ’After they got you a dress that cost about two hundred dollars and all that other stuff that matches it?”
I’ve got to get me a razor,” Annie answered. “I’ve got to shave these fucking hairs off my legs.”
It stormed in the night. A huge thunderstorm that roared in about twelve o’clock and woke up the town. Jennifer and Allen lay in bed listening to the hail hit the roof. Then they went into the kitchen and got out food. They got out potato chips and sliced chicken and mayonnaise and lettuce and tomatoes and chocolate chip cookies and Gatorade. Since the girls had been there they had completely altered their diet and gone back to eating things that tasted good. “Something’s bothering Annie,” Jennifer said. “She’s worrying about something and I don’t know how to ask her what it is. I don’t know if I should wait for Doctor Cole to find out or ask her. I don’t know how far to pry into her mind. What would it be like, to be here with us, to think you were on probation, whether you were or not? What else can we do?”
“She’s been knocked around from pillar to post all her life. How could she keep from worrying? If she’s breathing, we’re ahead. But I don’t like her taking Ritalin, Jenny. That’s a class four drug. Ever since we went through that business with going to the drugstore I’ve been reading up on it. I don’t think they ought to be giving her drugs for anything, even to make her do better in school.”
“Did you ask your brother?”
“He agrees it isn’t the best idea but Cole is the only child psychiatrist he could find us on short notice. He said it would be all right to let her take it for a month or so until he can find another doctor.”
“It seems to help.”
“Drugs are for sick people. She’s not sick. I thought we weren’t going to care if they didn’t act like normal children. I thought they were going to tear things up. I was hoping they’d break some of that bric-a-brac of Mother’s in the living room. I hate that bric-a-brac. I was looking forward to seeing it in piles on the floor.” Allen brandished his chicken sandwich. He added more mayonnaise and took a bite.
“I didn’t know you hated the bric-a-brac. I hate it too. If you hate it, let’s go take it down. We have those boxes the encyclopedia came in. We’ll take it down and put it in them.”
“Okay. Let’s do it.” Allen ate one last bite of his sandwich, grabbed a couple of potato chips, and led the way into the living room. There, behind the sofa, was a wall of shelves holding the remnants of his childhood, little cups and saucers and figurines and glass statues and vases and bookends. “I used to be late for baseball practice because I had to dust that stuff on Saturdays,” he said. “Now I shall have my revenge.” He began to take the things from the shelves. Jennifer brought in a bag of newspapers they were saving to recycle and began to wrap the pieces and put them in the encyclopedia boxes. They were almost finished removing every piece when Annie appeared in the door.
“That rain woke me up,” she said. “You guys have the noisiest weather I ever heard in my life.”
“No mountains,” Allen said. He went to her and put his arms around her shoulders. He pulled her with him over to where Jennifer was packing a kneeling Cupid into the last box. “Jennifer thinks you’re worrying about something,” he began. “So we’re worrying about you worrying. If you worry, we worry. We know something’s worrying you because we love you and we are thinking about you. You want to tell us what’s wrong, so we can worry about the right thing?”
“Why are you taking all this stuff down?” she asked.
“Because I’m sick of looking at it. We’re going to put it in the garage. You don’t want to talk about if something is worrying you?”
“I’m worried about going on that plane,” she answered. “I don’t see what holds it up.”
“I’ll show you what holds it up.” Allen hugged her tighter, then let her go. “You have come to the right place with that question, Miss Annie. Did you know that I just so happen to know how to fly airplanes? Did you know that I also know how to fly a helicopter and flew them for three years in the United States Air Force?” He took the little girl to a table and opened a volume of the new encyclopedia which was still stacked in a corner waiting for him to get around to assembling the bookshelf that had come with it. He spread the encyclopedia down on a table and began to teach her the principles of aeronautics.
Two weeks went by. In Berkeley, everyone was busy getting ready for the wedding. The guest list kept expanding as friends Nieman and Stella hadn’t heard from in months kept calling and asking where to send gifts. The gossip columns were full of the news. Also, the story of the girls from the home in Potrero had leaked out, adding to the public’s interest.
In Salem, Oregon, Stella’s mother was working out at a gym every afternoon hoping to lose weight so she wouldn’t embarrass Stella by being fat. Stella’s father was reading back issues of the National Geographic and pretending to ignore the whole thing. Nieman’s mother was so mad she couldn’t sleep. She had intended Nieman to marry a wealthy Jewish girl, preferably from New York City, and instead he had chosen this thirty-seven-year-old woman who didn’t even wear eye makeup. “You can barely see her eyes,” Bela Gluuk told her friends. “I doubt if she’ll have her hair done for the ceremony…No, of course not. No rabbi, not even a minister or a priest. Some woman judge, just to make me miserable, no doubt. What else has Nieman ever done?”
In Oklahoma City the day finally arrived to board the plane and fly to San Francisco. Annie clutched Allen’s hand and climbed aboard the plane. She had the cape slung across her shoulder. “Why are you bringing that?” Jennifer asked. “They have blankets on the plane.”
It’s something lucky we have,” Gabriela explained. “I let her carry it for luck.”
“Fine with me,” Allen said. They found their seats on the DC-9. Allen and Jennifer were together with a seat in between them and Gabriela and Annie were across the aisle. “There is nothing to fear on this plane but the food,” Allen whispered. “Don’t lose that sack with the sandwiches and cookies.”
“Allen,” Jennifer said. “Keep your voice down. Don’t let the stewardess hear you.”
“At least I know it’s my lucky day.” Gabriela reached underneath the cape and took Annie’s hand. “At least I lived long enough to have a vacation.”
Annie squeezed the hand Gabriela had put in hers. She pushed the sack with the lunch around until she was holding it with both her feet. Allen and Jennifer tried not to laugh out loud. “She lived to go on a vacation,” Jennifer whispered to him. “I have to start writing down the things she says.”
Stella and Tammili met the Williams family at the airport. Lydia had not been able to come as she had a class on Friday afternoons. “So, how was your flight?” Tammili asked. She picked up Gabriela’s backpack and carried it. Gabriela picked up Annie’s pack and carried that. Annie carried the cape.
“I threw up,” Annie said. “Allen told me why the plane stays up, but I stopped believing it when we were halfway here.”
“I made her look out the window at the mountains. That’s when it happened,” Gabriela added. “I thought you had a twin sister. Where’s the other girl?”
“She’s at an acting class. We have to take a lot of classes so we’ll have different interests. I don’t do it anymore, but Lydia does every-thing they think up for her. So, how are things going in Oklahoma? You all getting along all right?”
“Except for storms,” Gabriela answered. “Just when I thought I was going to live someplace that doesn’t have earthquakes, I get adopted by some people who live in Tornado Alley. That’s what they call it there. It’s okay, though. People wear a lot of colored clothes. Like all these old ladies have these pink outfits they wear to the mall. Do you all have malls around here?”
“We have Chinatown. Did you ever go to it when you lived out here?”
“Are you kidding? The nuns never took us anywhere. So, where’s this wedding going to be anyway?”
“At our house. That’s the best part. We don’t have to ride in a car in our dresses and get them wrinkled. All we have to do is put them on and walk out to the patio.” They had come to the baggage carousel and were standing beside the grown people, waiting for the luggage to come. Tammili moved nearer to Annie. She reached up and touched the cape. “That’s weird,” she said. “My sister and I had a cape like that. We lost it on a camping trip when Dad broke his arm. Where do you get those capes? Did you buy it in Oklahoma?”
“It’s magic,” Gabriela said. “It’s got powers in it.”
“So did the one we had. Listen, it stayed dry in this terrible rain. This synchilla blanket we had that’s supposed to wick faster than anything you can buy, got wet, but that cape was still as dry as a bone.”
“She thinks some monks in Nevada probably make them.” Annie moved the cape until it was around both of her shoulders. “Gabriela thinks they make them and sell them to people to give them luck. We seen some monks in Potrero. A bunch of them came and stayed with us on their way to Belize. We had them there for a week but that was before Gabriela came. She never got to see them.”
“I saw them. Where’d you think I saw monks if it wasn’t for that bunch that came and stayed at the home? I got there the day they were leaving. I saw them all sleeping on the ground. This cape is just like the stuff they were wearing.”
“We’re Jewish,” Tammili said. “We don’t have any monks.”
The bags arrived and a man in a uniform appeared and helped them carry the bags outside to a limousine.
“The limo’s just for fun,” Tammili said. “My dad thought you’d like a limo, so we got you one. There’re things to drink inside. Get in. See how you like it. Lydia and I adore limousines but we never get to get them because Dad usually says they’re for movie people and Eurotrash.”
The grown people got into the back and the girls got into the seats facing backward. Tammili was sitting next to Annie. She reached out and touched the cape again. She felt the softness of the weave caress her hand. “This is going to be the best wedding anyone ever had,” she said. “I’ve been waiting all my life to be a bridesmaid. I don’t care if it’s bourgeois or not. I think it’s the best.”
“Well, I’ve never been in a wedding. I never even gave it much thought. I just hope I don’t do something stupid.”
“My parents’ friends almost never get married. They just cohabit and have serial monogamy. So we are lucky this happened. You see, the groom is our godfather. He means a lot to us.”
Annie and Tammili were deep in conversation, their heads turned to each other. Gabriela started getting jealous. “Did you take your pill this morning?” she put in, leaning toward them. “Where are they, Annie? Where did you put them?”
“I don’t know,” Annie answered. “I don’t know where they are.”
“Dad found this article in the New York Times about these people who have been getting orphaned babies from China,” Tammili was saying. “We saved it to show you. Lydia and I are begging Mom and Dad to adopt some to go with the baby we’re having. They said if we both made the honor roll for a year they’d think about it. Anyway, we saved the article for you. I mean, what you’re doing is not that unusual. Well, this is San Francisco. That’s the Golden Gate Bridge up there. We have to cross it to get to our house.”
“She forgot her pills,” Gabriela said to Jennifer. “Annie forgot her Ritalin.”
Good,” Allen said. “She doesn’t need any pills. I think that doctor’s crazy to give pills to that child.”
“She’s taking Ritalin?” Stella asked. “I didn’t think they still prescribed that to children. What are they giving her Ritalin for?”
“To get her adjusted to school,” Jennifer answered. “Why? What do you know that we don’t know?”
“It’s just a very old-fashioned drug. Primitive, compared to the things we have now. How long has she been taking it?”
“A month. Almost a month. What’s wrong with it, Stella?”
I took a couple of them,” Gabriela put in. “It didn’t do anything to me but make me talk all the time. And, yeah, that day at school I did all that arithmetic so fast. I was wondering if that had anything to do with that.”
“You took one?” All three of the adults leaned her way.
“I sure wasn’t feeding them to Annie without knowing what she was taking. I seen, saw. I saw that happen with a girl in this place I stayed once. She took some pills this guy gave her and she ended up almost dying.”
“You took a Ritalin?” Allen took both her hands in his. Stella began to breathe into a Zen koan.
“I cut one in two. I know about drugs. I used to help out at the home when kids got sick. Sister Elena Margarite said she might make a nurse of me.”
“Where are they now?” Stella asked. “I’d like to see these pills.”
“She left them at home. She wouldn’t ever take them if I didn’t remind her.”
“It’s all right,” Jennifer said. “Forget about the Ritalin. When we get home we’ll find another doctor.”
“Was this my mother’s doing?” Stella asked. “Is this some of Momma’s old hippie connections she put you on to? Damn that woman. She and Dad are at a Ramada Inn waiting to hear from us. I’ve been praying for weeks they wouldn’t come.”
“Stella, how can you talk like that about your parents?”
“I’m an unnatural child. Nieman is too. That’s why we’re marrying each other. I finally met a man who isn’t interested in meeting my family.”
Annie had slid back into the seat, listening. These were the strangest adults she had ever encountered. All these days and weeks and they kept on acting just like they had the day she met them. As if life was funny, an adventure, something amazing to be watched and commented on. As if some light was in them that did not go out. She raised her eyes and they were smiling on her. Stella was looking at Gabriela.
“You got any crabs on this beach where your house is?” Gabriela asked Tammili. “I went to the beach a couple of times. These old birds were pecking for food in the sand and there were crabs underneath a log. I’d like to catch one in a bucket and get a good look at that if I could.”
“We’re almost there,” Tammili told her. “We are almost to our house.”
As soon as they arrived at the Harwoods’ house, Stella excused herself and got into her car and drove to her office in the biochemistry building and started making phone calls and pulling things up on her computer. In an hour she had talked to child psychiatrists in New Orleans and New York City and Pittsburgh. She had researched recent antide-pressants and had missed her appointment for a haircut. She stopped on her way home at a walk-in beauty parlor and let them even up the back and sides of her very short, severe haircut. She shook out the navy blue dress she was wearing to her rehearsal dinner and got into the shower still running the statistics on antidepressants through her head. Not good, she decided. Feeding Ritalin to a perfectly healthy child. She probably needs a shrink and Jennifer and Allen need to find out where she’s been and what happened to her but I could figure that out if I had her alone for a week. Anxieties are like fingerprints but they are easily traced. What a fantastic cousin I have to think up something this crazy and wonderful and brave. I really like that girl. And the other one, the small one, is as pretty as a picture. What a lovely, ancient face. She looks like she’s thirty years old inside. She took one of the pills! God, the human race. You can’t see that underneath a microscope, Stella. There is nothing in RNA and DNA to account for our behavior, except the attachments we form are in the pattern, aren’t they? Each of us has our receivers, what the old Jungians called the anima and animus, and someone comes along that fits the pattern and we meld. I am getting married in the morning to Nieman Gluuk. I am going to be his wife and make a home with him and be with him when we are old. Scary and wonderful, I guess.
She turned up the water in the shower and decided to stay there until the hot water ran out. The phone started ringing as soon as she got comfortable. She got out and answered it. “Stella,” Nieman moaned on the telephone. “Where are you? I can’t be alone waiting to get married. I’m coming over right this minute.”
“Then I won’t get dressed,” she giggled. “Come on. Let’s see what terror does to the parasympathetic nervous system.”
“I’m in the car. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
The living room of the Harwoods’ house at the beach was an inspiration of the movers. They had moved all the musical instruments into one room while they waited for someone to arrive and give them orders. The Harwoods had left it that way. The room contained two baby grand pianos and a harpsichord and a harp. That was it. Except for a long thin table holding a Bose music system the size of a book.
“Fucking-A,” Gabriela said when she saw it, forgetting her vow not to curse at the wedding.
“My grandmother bought it for us,” Tammili said. “Don’t worry about it being big. Most of it is wasted space. It was a wreck when we got it. We had to have the roof replaced and all the plumbing and the windows. The windows were so loose they rattled when it rained. So, there’s the ocean. I guess that makes up for everything. And the guest house is nice. You’ll like it there.”
“What do you do with all these pianos?” Gabriela asked.
“We play them. Go ahead, try one. Come on. You can’t hurt it. Momma’s got a piano tuner who used to work for the symphony. He comes out every other month. Go on, play it. See how it sounds.”
Gabriela walked over to the harpsichord and ran her fingers soundlessly across the keyboard. Nora Jane watched them from the doorway. “Would you like me to show you how?” she asked. “I have all these pianos because I was an orphan too. I have these pianos so I won’t have to put up with feeling bad in case I ever do. I just come in here and start making noise. Come on, sit down by me.” She sat down at one of the baby grand pianos. Gabriela sat beside her. Annie came and sat on the other side. She was still holding the cape over her shoulder like a shawl. Tammili stood behind her and laid her left hand very lightly on the cape. Nora Jane began to play show tunes, songs from Broadway musicals.
Tammili moved away from the piano. She began to dance. Gabriela got up and danced beside her. When Lydia came in the front door she found them dancing and joined them.
The wedding of Nieman Gluuk to Miss Stella Ardella Light began with children dancing.
The day of the wedding dawned bright and clear. By nine in the morning all four of the bridesmaids were dressed and wandering around the house getting in the way of the caterers. “Dahlias,” Freddy Harwood declared. “The house is full of dahlias.” Freddy was dressed in his morning suit and was videotaping everything in sight. He videotaped the bridesmaids in the music room and on the patio and in the kitchen. He videotaped the judge arriving with her twenty-six-yearold boyfriend. He videotaped Nieman and Stella getting out of Nieman’s car and walking up the pathway to the back door. “He’s scared to death,” Freddy said into the microphone. “He’s terrified. He can barely walk. He’s making it. He’s opening the door for her. It’s nine-fifteen. Forty-five minutes until ground zero.”
Nieman’s mother arrived in a limousine. Stella’s parents came in their Mazda van. The guests were crowding in. The driveway became packed with cars. The cars spread out across the lawn. The string quartet was playing Bach. Between nine-thirty and nine-forty-nine, a hundred and fifty people made their way up the front steps and filled the house. Someone handed bouquets to the bridesmaids. They formed a semicircle around the altar. The judge stepped into the middle. Nieman appeared. The quartet broke into a piece by Schubert. Stella joined her groom and the judge read a ceremony in which the bride and groom promised to do their best to take care of each other for as long as they lived and loved each other. Nieman kissed his bride. The audience heaved a sigh of relief and champagne began to be passed on silver trays.
“That’s it?” Annie said.
“I guess so,” Lydia answered. “You want to get some petits fours and go play in my room?”
“We had a cape like this,” she was saying later. She and Annie were lying on her bed with a plate of petits fours and wineglasses full of grape juice on her dresser. “We found a cape like this in this house we have that’s in the hills. We took it on this hike with us and then we lost it.”
“Your sister said the same thing. She said your dad broke his arm.” “We thought it was a lucky cape. Then we lost it.”
“This one’s lucky. As soon as Gabriela got it we got adopted. Just like that.”
“I wish we could get another one. Do you know where to get them?”
“No. But I can’t let you have this. It’s Gabriela’s. She just let me borrow it to fly on the airplane. So, is your dad going to take us to this amusement park?”
“He said he would if he could. If it opens before you have to leave tomorrow. I wish you could stay a few more days. There’re a lot of things we could show you. We could take you on BART” Lydia lay facedown upon the cape, smelling the wonderful smell of wildflowers. “I think they make these out of some kind of flowers they grow somewhere. Like linen is made of flax. Where do you think they make them?”
“I think, Italy.” Annie had no idea how she had decided to say Italy, but as soon as she said it she felt it was true. “I think they have this town in Italy and all they do is grow the flowers to make these capes.”
“They think the cape is magic,” Jennifer was saying. “They think they have a magic cape.”
“What?” Nieman asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Like Michael Jordan wearing number twenty-three,” Allen put in. “They believe in it, but they don’t know we know they think it’s magic. They just keep dropping hints.”
They were on the side porch of the Harwoods’ house. The wedding was winding down. The guests had nearly all gone home. The string quartet was in the kitchen talking to Freddy and Nora Jane. Jennifer and Allen Williams and the bride and groom were on the porch. It was the first time the Williamses had had a chance to be alone with the pair. Nieman had been commenting on how well the adopted girls had managed to fit into a scene they could not possibly have imagined. “Perhaps they saw it on a film,” he had been saying. “I’ve written several times about how film teaches manners. Not just the obvious bad things, like violence, but also niceties, like how to hold your wedding bouquet. Do you think they were exposed to many films?”
“I don’t know about that,” Allen said. “But they have a cape they think is magic.”
“They found the cape in a box of Salvation Army things a few days before we came to the home and met them. So they think it brought them luck. Technically, it’s Gabriela’s cape, but she lets Annie share it. She let Annie carry it on the plane. They pretended they wanted it for a blanket.”
“I’m having a déjà vu,” Stella said. She took Nieman’s arm. She pressed herself into his side. “What is this all about?”
“I have it too,” he said. “Just then. When Jennifer started talking about the cape. You have to understand,” he said to Jennifer and Allen. “The first time we met we had this huge mutual deja vu. Is this part of love, do you think? A harkening back to the mother–child relationship?”
“It’s probably blood sugar,” Stella said. ’A magic cape. Well, that’s a wonderful thing to believe you have. I found a really fine psychiatrist in Oklahoma City who will see her, Jennifer. I had to beg, but he’ll see her once a week. Don’t take her back to that man who gave her Ritalin. Promise you won’t go back to him.”
“Whatever you say, brilliant cousin,” Jennifer answered. “It’s unbelievable how much you learn to love a child, any child.” She looked at Allen. “It’s hard enough to suffer when you’re old. Eleven years old should be a happy time and we want to make it one for her. If you found someone, we’ll go and see him. I believe in psychiatry. I always have.”
“I’ve thought of going into it,” Stella said. “Sometimes I think I’ve taken molecular biology as far as it will go. Maybe I’ll abandon the field to Nieman and get myself a new career.” She closed her eyes, then opened them. “A dog runs across the street in front of your car. In a nanosecond the entire chemistry of the body changes. There are Buddhist monks who can regulate their heartbeat, control pain, choose when to die. There is so much to learn, so much to know.” She turned to Nieman and kissed him on the lips. Jennifer clapped her hands, then kissed Allen long and passionately. It was the best kiss they had kissed in many months. A storm was brewing on the ocean. The negative ions were thick in the clean, sweet air.
“We’ll come see you in August,” Tammili was saying. ‘And you’ll come here at Christmas when it’s snowing where you live. We’ll do that every year as long as we live and always be friends.”
“We swear by the cape to be friends,” Lydia added. The four little girls were sitting on the floor in their dresses. The cape was spread out between them. They were each holding part of it.
“Every time we see each other we’ll get your dad to take videos of us,” Gabriela put in. “In the meantime if he meets any movie people he can show them the videos and see if they want us to be in movies. Give them Jennifer and Allen’s phone number if they do.”