down at me, his face sad. “I really have to go,” he said quietly.
I nodded. I had blown this one but good. And no amount of bacon and eggs was going to make it better.
But a lesson had been learned: cheating on your sort-of-married boyfriend with your priest’s brother can only come to no good.
Chapter 12
With just two days to go before the wedding, I finally found a dress and shoes and got Max off my back. I did as she instructed and went to Nordstrom, returning with a sophisticated black dress that defied Max’s edict of “no black” and that had cost me a fortune. The outfit was stylish, not too bridesmaidy looking, and suited my slightly gone-to-pot beach-volleyball-player build. The day of the wedding, I went to the beauty salon in Manhattan that Max patronized. Although I had what amounted to a giant bouffant the likes of which hadn’t been seen since Angie Dickinson played Pepper Anderson on Police Woman, I drew the line at wearing the diamond tiara that Max had bought for me and just went with big-ass, hooker hair. When I was fully dressed, however, I had to admit that the hooker hair looked better than I would have thought and I made my peace with it.
The day of the wedding dawned bright and beautiful, a vintage New York September day. I hadn’t seen Crawford since le désastre cafétéria and until the rehearsal dinner the night before. There was so much happening at that event we didn’t have a lot of opportunity to chat; I had to reminisce with Max’s entire family, the Rayfields, and Crawford apparently had promised never to leave Fred’s side because the two remained side by side for the entire evening. I loaded up on vodka martinis and pigs in a blanket and let Max’s uncle Richard grab my ass during “The Girl from Ipanema,” so I had been a little preoccupied during the proceedings.
I don’t know why I had blurted out that I didn’t know whether or not I would go out with Jack McManus again; based on Crawford’s revelation that things were moving forward on the divorce, I should have leapt into his arms and professed my undying love for him. But I hadn’t done that. I had gone on a date and been vague about my intentions toward my date.
I would like to be able to say that I left my marriage to Ray unscathed, but based on my behavior the last few months, it would be hard to say it with any conviction.
Max and Fred got married at the chapel at St. Thomas, which was the same location as my wedding to Ray, but the similarity between the two unions stopped there. My wedding had been a small affair with only forty or so people; Max and her parents had invited just shy of two hundred and fifty people, while the Wyatts had more like sixty on their side. The Wyatts, come to think of it, looked a bit overwhelmed by the loud and boisterous Rayfields and stayed on their side of the church, staring solemnly at the altar.
The chapel is spectacular, with a long marble aisle and burnished oak pews. Max floated down on the arm of her father, smiling and crying. Fred, standing on the altar with me, Crawford, and Kevin, wept openly as he watched her approach.
Fred, despite his earlier assertion to me that he belonged to some kind of ancient Samoan religious sect, had actually been baptized Catholic, even though he had received no other sacraments. Kevin fudged some of the paperwork so that it looked like he had made his first Holy Communion and Confirmation, but he never really admitted to me just how much he had lied in order to make this church ceremony take place. I didn’t want to know; the Vatican police are rough on heretics and liars. Despite a history of social justice, the Catholic church has been known to set a few people on fire or feed them to lions. So, Max, despite not having set foot in a church since 1987, in an effort to please her parents, was permitted to marry in the chapel and have Kevin officiate, even though he would probably go to Vatican prison if anyone found out about his subterfuge. If it had been up to Max, she would have eloped, but her parents wanted their only daughter to marry in the church, at St. Thomas, and in front of their