We ran through the proceedings a second time with slightly better results. I decided to leave well enough alone.
'Okay, everyone, you can leave now,' I said. 'But be back here at eleven tomorrow. No exceptions.'
'You'd make a great stage manager,' Michael remarked.
'Or a drill sergeant,' I replied. 'I think everything we can control is under control.'
'As long as we don't have a thunderstorm we'll be okay,' Eileen's father said, frowning at the sky.
As if in answer, the sky rumbled. 'Uh-oh,' Michael said.
'Red sky at morning, sailors take warning,' Mrs. Fenniman chanted. 'Red sky at night, sailor's delight.'
'Was there a red sky tonight?' Michael asked.
'Who had time to look?' I said.
'Meg, we're not going to have a thunderstorm, are we?' Eileen asked. As if there were something I could do about it if we were.
'Not according to the weatherman,' I said. 'Not according to all three of the local weathermen.'
'Weatherpeople, Meg,' Mother corrected. 'Channel Thirteen has a weather lady.'
'Whatever,' I said. 'All the weatherpeople say sunny skies tomorrow, thank goodness.'
'But what if they're wrong this time?' Eileen wailed. 'It would absolutely spoil everything if we had a thunderstorm!' Then why did you dimwits shoot down every backup plan I suggested, I said to myself, and then immediately felt guilty.
'Don't worry,' I said. 'They'd be able to tell us if it were going to rain cats and dogs all day. If it's only scattered thundershowers, all it can do is delay us slightly. And that's no problem. I mean, nobody's going to kick us out of your yard if we run late. Your cousin the priest isn't going anywhere. The guests are there for the duration. It'll be fine.'
'Oh, I just know it's going to rain,' she moaned. And repeated, several times, while the rest of us were exchanging farewells. In fact, as I walked down the driveway with Dad and Michael, the last thing I heard was Eileen, plaintively wailing, 'Oh, I just know the rain's going to spoil everything.' Followed by my mother, in her most encouraging maternal tones, saying, 'Don't worry, dear; if it does, Meg will think of something.'
'Please, let it be nice and sunny tomorrow,' I muttered.
Saturday, July 16.
Eileen's wedding day.
One should be careful what one wishes for, as Mother always says. Eileen's wedding day did, indeed, dawn nice and sunny. Nice was over by nine o'clock, when the temperature hit 90 degrees and continued climbing. But it certainly was still sunny. By two o'clock, when the ceremony was supposed to begin, it would be absolutely hellish.
'Oh, for a thunderstorm.' I sighed, fighting the temptation to look at the thermometer again. What difference did it make if the temperature had broken into triple digits or was still hovering at 99? It's not the heat, it's the humidity, and we had more than enough of that.
'I'm afraid the air-conditioning's busted,' Mr. Donleavy apologized. For about the fifty-seventh time. As if I thought his air conditioner normally shrieked like a banshee while emitting a tiny thread of air not appreciably cooler than the air outside. 'And with Price still in the hospital ...'
'It's okay,' I said, as graciously as I could manage. 'Not your fault.'
One good thing about the heat, it tended to keep the members of the wedding party under control. Virtually comatose, in fact. No clowning about with the swords today. The men lounged around in the kitchen with their doublets off, or at least unbuttoned, waiting for the first guests to show. And resentfully swilling quarts of iced tea. Eileen's elderly aunt had caught two of them with beer cans earlier and was now sitting in a corner, sternly enforcing sobriety. I wondered if so much iced tea was a good idea. If all these tights-clad men waited to hit the bathroom at the last possible moment before the wedding started, they'd find out why women's trips to the john take so much longer. I thought of warning them, but it was too hot to bother. Let them learn the hard way.
Two of Be-Stitched's seamstresses were perched in another corner, waiting to make repairs or adjustments as needed. Michael had another two stationed upstairs to help stuff the women into our velvet when the time came. All four beamed and nodded whenever they caught sight of me. Nice to know I was such a hit with Michael's ladies.
Inside the house, the cloying smell of the patchouli incense Eileen was burning for luck warred for dominance with the smell of damp, sweaty humans. If you walked outside, the reek of citronella smoke hit you like a wall, from the dozens of mosquito repellent candles Dad was lighting throughout the yard.
'Everything under control?' Michael asked when I ran into him at the iced tea pitcher.
'So far,' I said. 'Just so I can say I told you so to someone, I hereby predict Eileen's last attack of prenuptial jitters will occur between one-forty and one-forty-five.'
'How can you be sure it will be the last attack?' Michael asked.
'After about two-thirty, they'll be postnuptial jitters, which makes them Steven's problem, not mine.'
'Good point,' he replied. 'Any predictions on how many heatstroke cases we'll have?'
'I'm trying not to think about it. I'm worried about Professor Donleavy in that velvet tent.'
To spare Eileen's father the indignity of tights, we had clad him in a long, voluminous royal blue velvet robe that would have been suitable wear for a wealthy, middle-aged Renaissance man. He took it surprisingly well. He was a professor, after all. Perhaps having to march in academic robes in the graduation ceremonies every year made the costume seem less ridiculous to him than it might to most men. Or perhaps after thirty-four years, he'd given up arguing with Eileen. At any rate, he was pacing up and down in the front hall, his elaborate Renaissance footgear looking very odd with the Bermuda shorts and William and Mary T-shirt he was wearing. He didn't argue for a second when we decided to wait till the last possible minute to put the velvet gown on him.
Father Pete was the only person already in full costume. If vanity was still a deadly sin, he'd have a busy time in his next confession. We'd had trouble prying him out of costume the night before, and today, long before anyone else could even look at their gear, he was completely togged out in the black velvet gown with gold and lace trimming that had looked so spectacular on Michael. He'd spent the last two hours strolling around the house striking poses and checking his appearance surreptitiously in any handy reflective surface. His only concession to the heat was to mop his forehead occasionally with a lace-trimmed handkerchief that he'd probably filched from a bridesmaid.
'Am I doing all right?' he asked me, in passing. 'Looking authentic and all?'
'You look fabulous,' I lied. Actually, he looked rather like Elmer Fudd in drag, but he was entering into the spirit of the thing so enthusiastically that I didn't have the heart to say anything else.
At one-twenty-five, Eric ran in, with Duck in his wake, to report that the first car was approaching. I sent him out to put Duck in her pen for the afternoon. I shooed the ushers out to earn their keep. There was the anticipated logjam in the bathroom. I waved a signal to the musicians. Gentle harmonies began wafting up from the garden, the sound of the lutes and recorders drowned out occasionally by faint rolls of thunder. I peered out at the first guests in amazement. What on earth had possessed them to show up here thirty-five minutes before the ceremony when they could be riding around with their air-conditioning on, or at least their windows open? Ah, well, it was their funeral. Though not, I hoped, literally. Inside, the tension level ratcheted up significantly. Although giving Eileen away only required one line, Professor Donleavy was obviously getting stagefright. I could hear him muttering, 'I do. I do,' with every possible variation in tone and inflection. Father Pete was humming along with the music and improvising a stately dance. I trudged upstairs to check events in the women's dressing rooms.
The bridesmaids donned their gowns and then sat around with their skirts up over their knees, fanning themselves or rubbing ice cubes wrapped in dish towels over any accessible skin. Good thing this crew was heavily into the natural look; makeup would have been running down our faces in sweaty streaks in five minutes.
Mrs. Tranh and the ladies were coaxing us all into the remaining bits of our outfits. Michael, looking
