Chapter 5: Saturday

The dress fit.

Of course it fit.

Bernie zipped me into it in the bride's room of a church on Christian Street and stepped back with a bobby pin in her teeth.

"Okay," she said around it. "I hate him. But I'd also marry a man who picked that dress."

"You're not helping."

"I'm the maid of honor. My job is to lie to you lovingly."

She fixed my black velvet bow and tucked a curl behind my ear.

Then she held my face in both hands.

"Any day," she said. "Page four. You walk, I drive."

"Engine running."

"Like a professional."

There was a knock.

My father came in, in a rented gray suit.

He looked at the dress.

He looked at the carpet.

He never once looked at my face.

"You look like your mother," he said to my shoes.

I could smell the whiskey on him from across the room.

It was 3:50 in the afternoon.

"Dad."

"I know." His voice cracked. "I know, Shiv."

He held out his arm.

I took it, because the music had started, and because he was my father and that was the only arm I had.

The church was full.

Not of guests.

Of men.

Men in dark suits in every pew, with wives in black and pearls beside them, and not one phone out anywhere.

Two men at the door had taken every phone in a basket.

Bernie said later it looked like a mob wedding in a movie, except nobody in a movie is that quiet.

I walked down the aisle on my father's arm to the sound of my own heels.

Halfway down I saw Raimondo, second pew, in a dove-gray cardigan under his suit jacket.

He winked at me.

Then I saw the man at the altar.

Charcoal suit, collar open, no tie.

No glasses.

He watched me walk the whole length of that church.

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