Chapter 31: The Wedding

The Tower ballroom had been built for three hundred, and on Saturday it held four hundred and six.

I counted from the doorway, out of habit, because I had counted the same room full of dust sheets.

The sixty in green jackets sat in the first rows, which they had insisted on.

Behind them sat my students, in their best, which meant two of them wore ties and one wore a charcoal-stained shirt on purpose.

Along the right aisle sat the women of the Lakeshore Club in pastel suits, with the woman in lavender in the front chair.

Beside her sat the auditor from table nine, and beside him, to my private delight, sat the silver-maned man from the Lantern Room.

He had sent a card that said, With respect, and a very large check to the art department, and an RSVP.

Winslow had said I could return the check.

I had said I would put it in the kiln.

The cooks had made the cake themselves, four tiers, a cream so white it hurt.

Pears had been piped around the edges in green marzipan.

Nobody would tell me who thought of that.

I stood at the double doors in a long white silk dress with a high neck and long sleeves.

I had wanted a turtleneck for my wedding, and I had found a seamstress who understood.

My mother's ruby was on my right hand beside her thin gold band.

My father's brass club pin was pinned inside my left sleeve, where nobody could see it.

The housekeeper stood on my arm.

She wore a dark blue dress and the pearl earrings her sister had given her for her own wedding, forty years ago.

She had already cried twice in the elevator.

"I've been feeding you since you were four," she said, under the string quartet.

"I know."

"Don't make me do this twice."

"I won't."

"Good. Because I'm going to cry all the way."

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