I grabbed a few hors d'oeuvres on my way past the buffet and trudged upstairs to Samantha's room. She wasn't there. I saw only Michael and the two little seamstresses staring out the window.
'Where's Samantha?' I asked.
Michael pointed out the window. I managed to find enough space to peer out over the seamstresses' heads.
'Dashed out without even changing,' he muttered. Mother and Mrs. Brewster came in.
'So where is she?' Mother gushed. 'I can't wait to see her in that lovely suit!'
It was a long driveway, but down at the other end we could see that Rob, still faintly elegant in his damp, limp gray morning suit was helping Samantha into the passenger's seat of her red MG. Stuffing her in, actually; she was still in her bridal gown, hoops and all, and he was bashing armfuls of expensive fabric down around her. God knows how he was going to find the gearshift under all that froth. He didn't even try to deal with the veil, just took it off, crumpled it into a ball, and shoved it down in the space behind the seats.
It was a lucky thing their backs were to us; they couldn't see the venomous looks they were getting from the two seamstresses. Or hear Michael sighing, 'Oh, shit.' I echoed his sentiments: what, pray tell, had happened to the bouquet throwing? We'd had a special throwing bouquet made, a slightly more compact version of the one Samantha had carried down the aisle, thereby nearly doubling the bouquet budget. Perhaps she'd held an impromptu throwing while I'd been looking for her. I peered down the driveway. No signs of a bouquet. But I did see Mrs. Fenniman pop up, apparently from the azalea bed, and begin throwing birdseed at them from one of the little lace-trimmed bags, and Rob was just getting into the car when--
'Where's Samantha?' Rob said, sticking his head in the door. Wearing his traveling clothes.
'Rob?' I said.
'If Rob's here--' Mrs. Brewster said.
'Who the hell is that?' I asked.
'Such language!' said Mother.
'Who the hell is who?' asked Rob.
'Who the hell is that driving off with Samantha?' Mrs. Brewster and I said, in unison.
'Oh, dear.' Mother sighed. 'That's very bad luck when two people say the same thing. You must both link your little fingers together and say--'
'Not now, Mother,' I said, on my way to the door.
Despite the handicap of my hoop skirts, I won the race to the end of driveway, finishing a hair before Mrs. Brewster. Michael came loping along close behind us, while Mother and Rob, not being quite sure what the fuss was all about, finished in a dead heat for last. Mrs. Fenniman, who had obviously gotten rather heavily into the Episcopalian punch, still had a great deal of birdseed left, so she chucked some at us as we pulled up. But, of course, we were all too late. As Mrs. Brewster and I reached the end of the driveway, we could just see the MG disappearing around the corner. And catch a few bars of a Beach Boys song blaring from the radio. 'I Get Around.'
That's Samantha for you. Always a stickler for those appropriate little details that really make an occasion.
As we stood, dumbfounded, something fell out of the dogwood trees above us and bounced off my head onto the gravel. Samantha's wedding bouquet. I heard a burst of high musical laughter from the upstairs window and looked up to see the seamstresses bobbing back out of sight.
'So that's what she did with it,' Mrs. Brewster said triumphantly, as if the discovery of the bouquet more than made up for Samantha's absence.
'You seem to have an affinity for these things,' Michael remarked, as he picked up the now-battered bouquet and handed it to me.
As soon as Rob understood what was going on, he insisted on dashing after them in the first car available. Mine. Several other birdseed-bearing guests had arrived at the end of the driveway, and they and Mrs. Fenniman cheered and pelted him as he pulled out. As word of the--was elopement the appropriate word? Flight, I suppose, was more accurate. As word of the flight spread, most of the male guests felt compelled for some reason to drive off in pursuit. No one was too clear on who they were pursuing, Rob, or Samantha and her fellow traveler, who turned out to be Ian, the last-minute substitute usher. There was a great deal of coming and going as cars drove up to report on where they'd been and what they'd seen, or hadn't seen and then set out again fortified with food and drink from the buffet. Mrs. Fenniman and her fellow harpies stood around by the driveway, swilling punch and sniping at the passing cars with handfuls of birdseed, giggling uproariously all the while, until at last they reached the point where they couldn't open the little bags and began throwing them whole, at which point somebody had the good sense to confiscate the remaining birdseed. They tried to keep up the barrage with acorns and pine cones, but that took most of the fun out of it and they lost interest fairly quickly.
Except for a couple of bridesmaids who considered themselves entitled to have hysterics and the mothers or friends who evidently felt compelled to cater to them, most of the women gathered around the food tables like a twittering Greek chorus. The peacocks, unsettled by all the chaos, adjourned to the roof for a filibuster. Mrs. Brewster retired to her bedroom with a migraine. Jake undertook the job of running around fetching her cold compresses, relaying her messages to Mr. Brewster (who had locked himself in his study with a bottle of Scotch), hunting down and locking up valuable items Mrs. Brewster feared might disappear in the confusion, and generally serving as chief toady and errand boy. I had no idea why--maybe it was a role he was used to playing with Mother--but he certainly made points with me for taking it off my hands. Personally, I had my doubts at first whether Mrs. Brewster's headache was real or merely convenient. I decided it was probably real--she did, after all, have reason--when she emerged looking absolutely ghastly and demanded, imperiously, that someone Do Something About Those Peacocks. Which was how I found myself at about seven o'clock, sitting on the roof of the Brewsters' house with Michael.
He was the only male who was neither half-drunk nor off in pursuit of the elusive trio. Instead, he had been lounging elegantly around the house, sipping punch, supervising the seamstresses' packing, flirting with me, eavesdropping shamelessly on every conversation within earshot, and obviously enjoying the hell out of the whole situation. But with a straight face, I had to give him that. When Mrs. Brewster issued her ultimatum, he volunteered to help me with the peacock roundup. We changed into jeans, unearthed Dad's ladder, and together managed to chase the birds back down into the yard. Some of the men who were tipsy enough that their wives had restrained them from driving off in search of Rob, Ian, and Samantha took over the roundup.
'I vote we let them handle it from now on,' I said. 'After all, someone's got to stay here, to repel the peacocks if they attempt another boarding.'
'Fine by me,' Michael said. 'I think there's actually a breeze up here.'
He stretched out luxuriously on a flat part of the roof with his head propped up against a second story dormer. He was right about the breeze. It was ruffling the lock of hair that had fallen over his forehead. I decided at that moment that I'd had enough punch.
'Everyone seems to be getting on rather well in spite of everything,' he remarked, startling me out of my reverie.
'Why shouldn't they?' I asked. 'I mean, what did you expect?'
'I don't know. His friends at one end of the yard reviling her, her friends at the other darkly hinting that he drove her to it, the minister darting back and forth striving in vain to prevent bloodshed, people storming off in outrage. Everyone seems rather ... I don't know. Cheerful?'
'I expect they are, really. I mean, for one thing, half the people here have known both of them all their lives, so the friends of the bride versus friends of the groom thing is out. The main debate is between the people who are saying 'I told you so' and the ones saying 'Well, I never!' And no one's going to leave now; they might miss the next disaster. Samantha surprised us all, she really did throw the event of the season, although not quite in the sense we expected. Cheerful is an understatement; they're having the time of their lives.'
A cheer went up from the side yard. Somebody had dragged the nets off Dad's strawberry beds and trapped one of the peacocks. Unfortunately, two guests had gotten entangled as well, and the peacock, somewhat the worse for wear, escaped before the guests did.
'If they deduct for damages, you're going to lose your deposit on those peacocks,' he remarked.
'Not my deposit,' I replied. 'The Brewsters are footing the bill for the livestock.'
'Aha! The first crack in the facade of interfamily solidarity. But somehow I expect you'll still be the one
