here, they could have a small church ceremony, really do it right. But Max told her they had other plans.
“We want our friends to be there,” he said. “And our families. If we’re going to do it, we want to do it in front of everyone.”
It sounded just like something Cleo would say, and Weezy knew that her son was repeating Cleo’s words, and she resented that. It was enough to make her scream.
“You know, if you have it in the backyard, it won’t be recognized in the church,” she finally said.
“It’ll be recognized everywhere else, though,” Max said. “Plus, Cleo’s not even Catholic.”
And that was how Weezy found herself in early June, staging this spectacle, this crazy event for everyone to see. “One day, we’ll look back on this and laugh,” Will said to her that morning. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she didn’t believe that for a second.
THE DAY OF THE WEDDING WAS WARM, but not too warm, and Weezy felt that she deserved at least that much. “Aren’t you grateful for the weather?” Maureen asked her, and Weezy just shook her head a little bit. If your son got his college girlfriend pregnant, if her mother was still so angry she could barely speak to her, if they were going to live in your basement while they had the baby, then you deserved a beautiful day for the wedding. That was all there was to it.
Bets was over at Maureen’s house, along with Cathy, Ruth, and Drew. And somehow Maureen knew enough not to breathe even a word of complaint. When Weezy finally picked up the phone to call Bets and tell her the news, Bets was surprisingly calm.
“Oh, Weezy,” she’d said. “Don’t worry about it so much. Once kids are out of your house, you can’t control what they do. Not one bit. Believe me, I’ve learned that.”
And even though it sounded like Bets was placing some sort of judgment on her and Maureen (what on earth could they have done that would have disappointed her, really?), she didn’t care. She kept waiting for Bets to start being, well, Bets. But it didn’t happen. She’d been quiet during her visit, sitting and smiling at the family, and not even muttering anything about “bastards” under her breath. It was a wedding miracle.
The girls had been fighting—were at each other’s throats, actually—and it was driving her crazy. They were acting like they were back in high school, stomping up the stairs and knocking loudly on the bathroom door, screaming, “I need to get in there!”
“Girls, enough,” she’d yelled that morning. They were in the kitchen, bickering about cereal, and she couldn’t take it anymore. And the two of them, still in their pajamas with their hair messy, had turned to look at her like she was the crazy one. Cleo and Max had both just come up from the basement, and were standing at the kitchen door, staring at her as well. She felt like telling all of them to just shut up, to do exactly what she said. She had half a mind to just leave the house and let them all deal with the wedding on their own. But she knew she’d never do that. It wasn’t her way.
“We all need to work together today,” she finally said. And all of them had nodded, like quiet, obedient children.
Outside, workers were setting up white wooden folding chairs in two groups, to create an aisle in the middle. At the front, there were two large potted plants, which sort of made it look like an altar. Sort of. All of the flowers were white, which is what Cleo wanted. And even though Weezy would have gone a different way, she had to admit that it looked pretty.
When they’d started planning the wedding, Weezy considered finding a new florist. After all, how could she explain this wedding to Samuel? But in the end, she knew he would be the best, and she called him to set up an appointment.
“This is a delicate situation,” she’d said. “I’m actually not calling about Claire’s wedding. It’s—well, it’s my son’s.”
She’d gone on to tell Samuel the whole story—more than she’d told most of her friends, in fact. He’d listened kindly, told her gently that he’d done more of these sorts of weddings than she could even imagine. He told her that she was a lovely woman, a kind mother to be there for her son and his wife-to-be, promised