Chapter 24: No Objection

The wedding was on the bluff behind Cassio's house, at four in the afternoon.

Nobody had sent invitations.

Word had gone around the harbor, and by three o'clock there were seven hundred people on the lawn.

Four hundred of them were dockworkers in clean orange vests.

The foreman had told them they were not allowed to come in work boots.

I stood in the upstairs bedroom in a plain ivory dress with long sleeves.

My mother sat behind me on a stool, braiding my hair.

"Hold still," she said.

"I am holding still."

"You've been bouncing your foot since breakfast."

"I'm a bride, Mama."

"You were engaged for five years, and you never bounced at all."

She pinned the last braid and set her hands on my shoulders.

In the mirror, she looked rested for the first time in months.

"I used to braid your hair for school," she said. "Silvia's, too."

"Mama."

"I'm not sad. I'm remembering."

She kissed the top of my head.

"Go. Your brothers are waiting at the bottom of the stairs."

Fabio and Carlo stood in the front hall in dark suits.

Carlo had a new watch, a plain steel one.

Fabio was fiddling with his tie.

"Who's walking me?" I asked.

They looked at each other.

"We thought both of us," Carlo said. "If that's allowed."

"It's allowed."

They gave me an elbow each.

The bluff ran out to the edge of the Jersey shore, and the ocean was wide and gray beyond it.

White chairs stood in rows on the grass.

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