Chapter 23: Second Vows

We married the second time on a Saturday in April, in the garden of the Pozzi church.

The cherry trees were in bloom along the wall.

Vincenzo had wanted a ballroom.

I had said I wanted folding chairs and a lemon cake.

Allegra's mother had said that a garden was better than both, and nobody argued with her.

Fio was my maid of honor, in a green dress she said made her look like a pickle.

"It makes you look like a very elegant pickle," I said.

"That's what a pickle wants."

She had a cherry in her fist already.

The actress had driven in from Joliet, where a theater was finally giving her a leading role.

She sat in the second row and cried through the processional, with her mascara running down her chin.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, when I passed her. "I'm just so proud of you. Is that weird? That's weird."

"It's not weird."

"I wore your face and I'm proud of you."

"Sit down and keep crying," I said, and kissed her cheek.

At the end of the garden path, Allegra's mother waited in a lavender suit with her purse over her arm.

She had asked to walk me.

"I don't have a father," I had told her.

"You have a mother," she had said. "Two, now. It's a lot of mothers, but you'll manage."

She took my arm and we went down the path together at the speed of a woman in good shoes.

The families stood on both sides of the aisle, the same grey men I had faced across a parish hall table.

They did not look at my face as if it belonged to someone else.

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