Atwood Margaret - The Heart Goes Last

“You never let us have any fun,” says Con, but he does as she says.

“Lucinda’s a client,” says Jocelyn primly. “We have our standards.”

Floral

The wedding is pure enchantment! Or maybe it’s weddings, two of them, because although Aurora and Max are getting married for the first time, Charmaine and Stan are renewing their vows, so the wedding is for them too.

A Wedding Elvis performs the ceremonies – it’s Rob from UR-ELF, in a white-and-gold jumpsuit with a silver belt and a purple cape with silver stars on it – and three Singing Elvises perform the music, to a backup soundtrack played from a speaker hidden inside one of the floral baskets. Charmaine has choosen the flowers – she opted for the Forget-Me-Not selection, a pale blue medley with sprays of miniature pink roses, and it looks just lovely. The sun shines, but then it always does in Vegas, no matter what is going on in the rest of the world.

As an extra treat, a group of five Marilyns, hired by Charmaine and wearing pink taffeta dresses with an off-the-shoulder line, sort of like the big production number in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes where she sings the song about diamonds, only without the long train. The Marilyns smile as if they’re delighted out of their minds, which is what you want at a wedding, and there aren’t any actual relatives to do it, so Charmaine booked this fivesome. They really give value for money, they cheer and laugh and throw rice on all of them at the end, and one of them catches Aurora’s bouquet.

Charmaine doesn’t have a bouquet as such because she isn’t exactly getting married, though it feels like that to her, but she has a spray of pink roses, and that’s almost the same. She’s wearing a floral print in pink and blue, and Stan has a shirt with penguins on it, she found it online. It’s sentimental, but she’s a sentimental person.

There’s champagne at the outdoor reception with a sun area and a shade area, and a fountain with three mermaids holding mics as if they’re a backup group, three surfers playing guitars, and three cupids, each one pouring water out of a fish, with a stone head of Elvis at the top, smiling his Elvis smile. Someone has put a wreath of flowers around his neck.

Charmaine is so happy. The dark part of herself that was with her for so long seems to be totally gone. It’s as if someone has taken an eraser and erased the pain of those memories. It’s not that she can’t remember the things that happened – those things Grandma Win used to tell her not to think about. She can remember them, but only like pictures, or a bad dream. They don’t have power over her any more. It must have been something the doctors did when they were fixing the inside of her head so she would love Stan, only Stan, and nobody else. It was the other Charmaine who’d wandered away from him, and that Charmaine is gone forever. It’s so amazing what can be done with lasers!

She even watched Max, or Phil, being married to Aurora without a twinge of longing or jealousy. And at the reception, when people were kissing the brides, Max kissed her mildly on the cheek, and though once she would have melted like a microwaved Popsicle at his smallest touch, it didn’t bother her at all; it was just more or less like having a fly land on you, she could brush it off and think no more about it. All those things they did, that time when she was so crazy about him – crazy is the right word for it – they’ve faded. It’s like she was under some kind of a spell and then, poof, it was gone. She recalls those interludes clearly but distantly, and also fondly, almost as if she’s recalling the antics of a child, though not herself as a child. She didn’t do any antics then. She was too scared.

There’s Max, or Phil, with Aurora now; he’s under one of the sun umbrellas, he’s got Aurora backed up against the table, his arms are around her, his torso is squashed up against hers, he’s kissing her neck. You can tell he can hardly wait to get her into bed and run those skilful hands of his all over her face job. Charmaine searches her heart, and the only thing she can find in there in the Max compartment is the best of wishes for Aurora, because it’s obvious Max is devoted to her, he follows her around with his eyes all the time, despite what she looks like. Anyway she looks better than she did, because she’s glowing with joy, and it’s the inner beauty that counts. Most of the time. Some of the time. And Max must be happy too! He must be!

There’s Stan over by the Cupid fountain with two Marilyns, who are feeding him bites of the wedding cake. The cake is white, with blue-and-pink icing in a design of bluebirds holding ribbons and festoons of roses in their beaks and claws, which is the design Charmaine ordered to go with the total decoration scheme. It’s very intricate, but she got it 3-D laser-printed.

The Marilyns are definitely overdoing the act, and in those pink taffeta off-the-shoulder dresses you can peer right down their fronts, which is what Stan is doing, but you can’t blame him, because what’s a shelf display for except to be looked at?

It’s time for an intervention. She strolls over, rather quickly. “Thank you for taking such good care of my wonderful husband,” she says, linking her arm through Stan’s. Then she sees that one of the Marilyns is Veronica, though with a white-blond wig, and everyone knows Veronica can love only her blue bear, poor thing, the same way that Charmaine can love only Stan – that story was all over the TV, Veronica’s quite the celebrity now – so it’s all right.

“Veronica!” she says. “I didn’t know it would be you!”

“How could I miss it?” says Veronica. “I wanted to see the happy ending. You remember Sandi?”

“Sandi!” Charmaine cries, giving her a hug. The last time she saw Sandi in person she was plasticuffed, with shackles around her ankles. “Oh my god! I’m so glad you got out okay! I saw you on TV! It’s like a miracle!”

“It was a close one,” says Sandi. “They’d stuck the hood on and I was just being hauled out the cell door, I figure now on my way to get recycled for spares, though I didn’t realize it at the time. Then there was a lot of cellphone babble, Jocelyn telling them to hold off on everything till further notice because there’d been an exposé and Ed had gone AWOL with the profits. Those guards dropped me on the floor and ran for it, and by the time I picked myself up and made it to the outside, all the gates were open and it was like, Out of here! What a traffic jam! Plus I got a bruised elbow. But hey! Who’s complaining? I’m still in one piece, I’m not shishkebob.”

“I keep telling her they wouldn’t have cut her up for parts,” says Veronica. “She’s too cute. They would’ve shipped her out here and done the brain thing on her. She would’ve ended up with some wrinkly rich dude, acting out his every whim.”

“Like the Fuck Tank,” says Sandi, “only this time with feeling.”

”And with a lot more cash,” says Veronica, and they laugh.

Sandi raises her champagne glass. “Here’s to the old days,” she says. “May they rot in hell.”

The Marilyns head over to the champagne table for a refill, and Charmaine puts her arms around Stan and squeezes him. “Oh, Stan,” she says. “This is so wonderful! Aren’t we lucky?” Stan squeezes her back, though in an absent-minded way. He seems dazed, or maybe it’s the champagne. He’s been drinking it like soda pop, he’s had more than enough. But he’ll be fine tomorrow, thinks Charmaine. It’s worked out for the best, because what’s past is prologued all’s well that ends well, like Grandma Win used to say. Not that this is the end. No, it’s the beginning, a new beginning. The beginning as it should have been. Not everyone gets a chance at that.